God's Dice
by Forbiddensoul562
Summary: The soul mark, imprinted into each human being, reads the name of the person destined to be one's soul mate. Upon finding and touching the hand of that person, a connection is created, linking the two minds together as one. It is by chance that Near hears Mello's words: "You can't be my soul mate, Matt, there's no way your parents would've named you 'Nate'." MelloxNear.
1. Could The Universe Be So Vicious?

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note, the characters used in this story, or the quote used here or any subsequent ones I decide to use throughout this story. I do not own the cover image to this story and do not intend to claim I do by using it as the cover image.

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Chapter 1: Could The Universe Be So Vicious?

_"I am utterly convinced that God does not play dice with the universe."  
__-Albert Einstein_

My gray eyes scanned over the exposed skin of my torso, looking over the familiar pale flesh with a subdued usual air of distaste locked within my blank stare and tugging at the threads of my thoughts. I carefully surveyed over every minute divot of myself and every natural curvature which formed by the pull of skin over the muscles and bones that created my body's relatively weak frame.

Slowly my trained, vigilant stare traveled upwards across the expanse of my body, analyzing the smooth lines where my abdomen seamlessly converged with my chest, and ultimately allowed my eyes to finally move over to where _it_ sat.

The sight instantly churned my stomach into a broiling stew of utter disgust.

Written across my otherwise unblemished alabaster skin and reminiscent of any normal, inborn birthmark, lay the tentatively constructed Romanized letters printed over top the location of my heart in an almost ethereal light shade of beige. The letters were painted upon the canvas in a delicate design constructed to read the name I had memorized since childhood; since I'd been old enough to ask about it.

The soul mark.

The letters of the soul mark were imprinted upon every person in the same manner that a birthmark came into existence, appearing upon children while they're still infants. No one knew why or how the soul marks came to be past speculation, but as I looked at it with antipathy I could still faintly hear my mother's voice in my head, when she would feel I asked too many questions about the mark and sit me down to tell me that the names were the physical proof that God existed; that He had a plan for each of His human creations.

The specific name etched into every person on Earth was the name of the individual designated to be your soul mate. Of that much everyone could be sure.

My eyes slipped closed to block out the world as my memories took me back again to my mother's explanations. The names, she'd said, were a guiding light by God to direct people to the individual they're destined to connect and bond with. For when soul mates found one another and their hands touched, a bond was instantly ignited, establishing a shared mental link, or path of shared mental thoughts and feelings between the two.

I swallowed down the lump forming in my throat as my eyes opened once more on the present and I looked down from my reflection in the mirror before me. How foolish she had been to tell me such a fickle tale. My fingers went to work fastening up the buttons of my white shirt, though the pale brown name continued to linger at the corner of my sights, licking at my gaze like a fire.

_'Soul mates...'_ I thought to myself with malice. _'What a ludicrous idea. To think that this imprint of names is some carefully devised plan of God implies that He actually cares more for the sentiments of love, and belonging than He does for solving the crisis's of world hunger and war. If that's actually the case, I can hardly see why anyone would want to follow such an omnipotent being.' _

My fingers were suddenly stopped on the buttons at my chest; my stare remained transfixed, refusing to shift away from the security of the plastic fastenings over to the letters again. The soul mark's careful arrangement existed like the imprint of a seal in hot wax on a treaty I hadn't freely signed. It was a metal lock bolting shut the cage surrounding my own sense of humanity; a padlock for which I had no intention of uncovering the key to.

I was perfectly content with remaining amongst the statistics of people who ultimately never found their soul mate. Life was easier without such a trite, unnecessary distraction when there was so much more to worry about.

I finally finished buttoning up the shirt,_ 'If the designated names are indeed designed by a deity to help guide us to our predetermined soul mate, then what does it say about a god who then places his so-called carefully devised pieces into an institution which abandons the use of real names?' _I considered as I turned away from the mirror in my bedroom, adding the cynical thought, _'It alludes to the rather heretical thought that perhaps this god doesn't know how to play his own game of chance very well.'_

The soul mark seemed to prick at my skin beneath the confines of the shirt as I made my way to the exit door of the bedroom, _'Why would humanity care to search out their soul mate anyway?'_ I wondered to myself, _'Perhaps I could sympathize with the notion of discovery simply for the satisfaction alone of knowing who this soul mate is. But creating the bond? No, the only people willing to go through with that are those unable to tame the deafening lone static within their own minds.'_

I pulled open the door, an unconscious sense of comfort flooding over my being at my own recognition of mental peace in existing entirely on my own. _'What could be the evolutionary benefits of sharing mental thought processes with another human being?'_ I contemplated to myself as I mindlessly meandered down the hall of mostly closed bedroom doors. The soft morning light fell through the panes of the window lying at the end of the hall, revealing to the world the cause of the relative quiet within the orphanage, however temporal it might be.

"No, Matt, I'm not going to tell you."

My movement towards the stairs came to a halt suddenly, as a trail of muddled words from an all too familiar source caught my attentive ears. The words spilled from the cracked bedroom door shared by the two lower successors only a few feet away from my location. "What does it matter, anyway," Mello's bored voice questioned, "You know bonded soul mates would hardly be tolerated at this damn institution, anyway."

_'It seems I'm not the only one who's considering the soul marks this morning.'_ I thought, taking another step forward, _'At least Mello's capable of keeping his priorities in line.'_ I moved to keep walking in an effort to leave the hall before I was forced to be confronted with Mello this early in the morning. But somehow it felt as if my legs were caught within a thick sludge; making movement a much slower progression than I originally thought I'd wanted.

"Well maybe it wouldn't be tolerated for those this close to the L succession, but if we're not actually soul mates then it doesn't matter anyway." Matt's voice added nonchalantly, "Aren't you at least a little curious about it, Mels?"

_'Anyone who isn't curious is either foolish or a liar.'_ I could help but silently answer back to him, _'Curiosity is a part of human nature, after all.'_

"Of course I'm curious." Mello voiced, his volume now coming out at a lower decibel, his tone more solemn than before, "But I don't really need to be curious about that sort of thing with _you_ specifically. I hate to tell you this, Matt, but I already know you're not my soul mate."

"How so? I've never even seen your soul mark before." Matt added curiously without an ounce of offence taken by the blonde's assertion.

"I've seen my soul mark a lot, and likewise I've known you a long time. Honestly, Matt, you don't even remotely look like the sort of person whose parents would name you 'Nate', of all things. So there's that."

My pace came to a screeching halt and in that moment it felt as though even the beating heart locked behind the chilled wax of my soul mark was frozen into stark silence. My stare instantly flew back over to the two lower successors cracked bedroom door only a few feet away.

Could God and his entire created universe really be so vicious?

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A/N: I'm playing around with the idea of only using one author's note in my chapters now. Originally this was published on Tumblr in third person, but I decided I wanted to practice writing first person, and also practice writing something that is designed to actually be romantic, unlike some of my other fics. So, I've spent a lot of time on working through this fic so far, so if you could do me the courtesy of sending me a review to let me know your thoughts I would greatly appreciate hearing from you!

Please review  
_-Forbiddensoul562_


	2. Could It Be So Interesting?

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1 for full disclaimer.

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Chapter 2: Could It Be So Interesting?

_'Nate.'_

The name echoed through my ears long after it'd been said, ringing through my mind like church bells. No, not the church bells that called together the congregation of the faithful. The name rang like funeral bells leading the procession of a morbid parade.

How long had it been since I'd heard that name; since I reminded myself that it was indeed some minuscule form of my identity? It didn't feel like me, or rather, it wasn't me anymore. That name existed as nothing other than a former remnant and a spider's thread of trail leading back to an existence I hardly remembered.

But that name...

Statistically speaking, the sheer number of possible people identified by it within the country, let alone the world, was too high to begin trying to calculate. Yet I couldn't fight the ever sickening distant ring of the church bells which reminded me that, no matter the number's scale, I still made up a figure within the congregation.

The creaking sound of the door which harbored the ringing bells being pulled open brought my attention back to unfolding reality of the confrontation surely about to occur. I felt my teeth grit together as I braced myself for whatever could be thrown at me. Normally Mello wouldn't address me, instead ignoring my presence entirely as some silent way of telling himself that I'm not worth his time. But after such a precarious subject had been discussed and hinted at, he'd certainly feel defensive at the sight of a potential eavesdropper.

"What are you doing?" He sneered at me. The words fell like precious clockwork, in time with my deduction of Mello's character. Wisps of blonde caught my peripherals as he moved around my stationary figure, his blue orbs locked with my own as a new shade of red greeted the corner of my eye and Matt came into view, looking between us silently.

_'Does Mello realize how easy he is to read?'_ I wondered to myself.

I couldn't help wonder what had occurred between the two when Mello's utterance of that name had thrown me into my own mental world of calculations. My gaze shifted downward to their hands, each situated within their own pockets. Their bodies were roughly three feet apart, no sense within their body language suggesting any sort of need for closeness from the other.

No… they definitely weren't soul mates.

If Matt _did_ share that name with me and they'd created the mental link between them Matt would certainly be talking Mello out of whatever _this_ was right now. He'd tell Mello of all the things more important than risking getting into a verbal battle with me; how un-worth it, I was. Matt always had a way of doing that. He's certainly good for Mello's character, but he doesn't seem to know how much Mello just needs to vent his frustrations to the source from time to time.

I wondered if Matt realized that while he's good at being Mello's wall, he'd never be a fitting opponent for him. Shouting at a wall can only relieve so much if the wall doesn't talk and fight back against you when you really need it. That's what these little confrontations Mello initiated were for. Matt takes these confrontations too literally, as actual fights when instead they seem to work like the turning of a valve releasing the steam constantly accumulating within Mello's system.

… Then again, Mello _had_ always made it a point to indicate just how arrogant I come across and thus must think myself to be. _'Perhaps he's right.'_

"Well?" He asked, bringing me again out of my thoughts.

"Sorry," I reached for a strand of hair, "my contemplation's were more interesting than providing for your controlled chaos..." I chided, never breaking our stare yet observing the way his figure tensed under my words. _'Interesting.'_

"Anyway," I continued, "I apologize for not answering, Mello. I was evaluating whatever the state of you and Matt's relationship might be." I watched him visibly recoil a bit; clearly my response was not one of the things that'd crossed his mental list of possibilities I might say. I couldn't blame him, there.

"What?" He spat. "What the hell does that mean?"

I twirled a lock of hair around my index finger, shifting momentarily in place before beginning to step both towards his location and to the stairs. Mello instantly tensed further though the focus of his world never broke from mine, and in response Matt's also grew rigid; his green eyes moved from me to glued only on Mello, ready to jump if the blonde made any move against me. I smirked; it was a perfect visual depiction of each of their priorities. I wondered if they noticed… probably not. Stockholm syndrome and all that.

"Exactly what it sounds like." I said simply. "Don't think on it too much it's not really of any importance. In fact, forget I said anything." I paused a moment as I came to be parallel with him, his gaze was fire and mine of ice, "You should go to the library," I told him as I finally slipped past him on my way to the stairs, "You're going to need a lot of cramming if you want to have even the slightest of chances of showing me up in class, tomorrow."

"Near." I heard him quietly spit my name.

"Also, from now on if you're going to discuss soul marks you might want to consider closing the door first." I told him, "Though, it seems you're not nearly as foolish as so many other people out there. That's good to know, Mello."

I made my way down the stairs, successfully ending our rather one-sided conversation, though the growing space and reappearing external quiet only proved to increase the hiss of thoughts and interest my mind began to play in regard to this issue of soul mates.

Identifying one's soul mate existed as just another social custom that people were constantly fixated upon, but at the same time no one ever really seemed to want to communicate this to anyone else. It was as if the knowledge of its customary existence was normal, but the sheer idea of blatantly putting oneself out there to actually locate the bearer of their soul mark was just too much of a risk.

I'd observed the way in which, even before names were exchanged people would go through these awkward motions to try and touch one another's hands, just to see, just to know if the person they were conversing with was their soul mate.

It's sad, really. Pathetic, even.

I'd never been one to condone the legitimacy of true soul mates, but how desperate does someone have to be to go to such an extent to find out if that person is the one they're 'heart' searches for, the one that is designed to be the perfect complement of their soul, as some people believe? What assurance could anyone have that the bearer of one's soul mark was actually a good match for that person beyond simple social convention and some embedded sense of divine order?

I pulled myself away from the internal battle of possibilities raging within my mind and back down into the secure reality I hadn't realized I'd slipped away from.

It was mid-morning now. I'd taken refuge in the common room of Wammy's to work on a puzzle as a way to occupy my hands while my thoughts drifted to the trivialities of those around me. Though, suddenly the issue of soul mates didn't quite seem as trivial when that _name_ was attached to the issue.

I never personally cared. It doesn't matter. It never will. Everyone else at Wammy's always seems so concerned with knowing whether or not there is someone here with a name fitting their soul mark. It only led to a loss of sight towards the ultimate goal at the end. _That's_ the only thing that should ever matter.

Regardless, it seemed as though every day I hear _something_ of people debating whether they should 'take the leap', to secretly exchange names, or touch to see if they're meant to be. It's inescapable. The romantics say love is supposed to be a drug; something everyone is addicted to. I'd say a cancer is more of a correct metaphor to use. But I suppose that's still up for debate.

"But what if my soul mate _is _here?!"

I suddenly heard, listening from the floor as two girls' words only proved my point. But, then again, I guess people must always talk. School girls especially do little else. I began picking up the pieces of my blank puzzle, unable to stop myself from further eavesdropping on their conversation on the other side of the room.

"But what if he's not! Nobody here is right, anyway." The other girl stated in a condescending tone. "All the boys here are dumb; you don't want to be attached to any of them!"

I couldn't help stopping my compulsive movements to look up at the two from behind white strands of hair, giving a small cough. Immediately their exchange stopped, looking over at me as if for the first time realizing that I was even in the room. Typical for people of Wammy's House. They both offered embarrassed smiles, but made no other move to apologize before going back to their conversation.

'_Women…'_

"But I still can't help wondering…" The first girl continued. "What if he is? I would still rather know."

"Who would you want to be your soul mate anyway?" The second asked.

I couldn't listen to any of this, anymore. Wammy's House was supposed to be above this sort of mundane droll. It was supposed to be a place for the gifted who wanted to fight to become the next L. But as I gathered my puzzle together and got up to leave the room, I couldn't help but entertain the notion that perhaps the race was too daunting for anyone else to even care about anymore, and instead they worked to be the best at whatever it was their 'gift' was.

Perhaps these girls 'gift' was gossiping and talking about useless nonsense. It takes every sort of person to make the world whole, after all.

It seemed now the race to be L consisted of only Mello and me, and technically you could only realistically say Mello was the one fighting. For what reason did I have to fight? If this was indeed a true competition, then I already held the prize. It made sense that our war was too heated for anyone other than us to be willingly burned by it. It seemed oddly fitting...

_'Where am I going?_' I asked myself, looking through the halls of the orphanage. I felt lost between these walls; trapped within a building that was stuck on the subject of soul mates. Trapped in a _world _full of such people… Could I really be the only person here who had no concern of who was meant for whom? Was I the only person who saw beyond the fact of soul mates themselves to the error their design created?

I suppose there was always Mello… But while he had proven that much, at the same time I doubted his mind rarely ever traveled far from anything other than the competition. Statistically speaking though, he was the only other candidate in this orphanage who had enough of a rational head on their shoulders to look past such a thing.

… Well… I suppose as rational as one could be when you're desperately trying to fight your way to an ultimate prize…

_'Nate.'_ That name played across my mind again, sending a bitter taste through my mouth.

_'Perhaps it'd be possible to have a civil conversation with Mello…'_ I contemplated as I meandered aimlessly down a hallway, _'taken away from the competition, and the very idea of L and everything he stands for, Mello has to be an extraordinarily diverse and useful being. But that being said, what is Mello without competition? It feels like we've all been born into this. Do we even have anything left of our core selves that knows anything other than fighting for our future?'_

I came to a stop, my eyes unfocused on the world in front of me. _'No, I don't think so. But I wonder what it feels like to live with the knowledge everyday that if you don't ultimately win the deemed prize of becoming L then you mean nothing to Wammy's House. I assume that's what drove Mello to his current state. Can't say I blame him, though.'_

I continued walking through the first floor halls, finding myself ultimately back where I'd started at the common room. The girls who'd driven me out were still by the window on the left, their mouths continued to move, chatting away as if it hadn't been the reason to bring the room into utter abandon.

My look through the closed glass doors darted over to my blank puzzle which sat completed in the middle of the floor, waiting to be toppled over for the hundredth time. But as I contemplated the action I realized that even that was becoming dull to me. One can only put the same pieces back in the right place so many times before the task becomes more monotonous than actual mental entertainment.

Though I suppose it still ultimately did serve its purpose as a mental distraction. It allowed me something to focus on for a small moment of time, granting a moment of mental silence and clarity that often is the most crucial thing required when presented with a problem.

Did I need a distraction right now? Yes.

But did I need _that_ distraction?

Outside the large windows the two girls were sitting at, the morning skies that'd shown rays through the building were darkening; promising an infamous oncoming rain that was typical of English weather, unfortunately. I sighed, '_It's much harder to avoid everyone when they're all locked inside with me.'_

I turned away from the common room and my waiting white puzzle. Right now I didn't need something to take the problem away from me; I needed something to magnify it, to be able to look at it right before my eyes to understand why the human race was so fascinated by the idea behind these soul marks.

If I wanted, I could get the answers straight from the source. There was a couple within Wammy's who had 'taken the leap', as they say, and touched, felt the spark, and had ignited the connection that was 'designed to be by God' between them. But at this point it wasn't an interrogation I was after. I needed to understand the mechanics before I brought in human subjects. Humans have such an annoying way of defying everything logical, whether by coincidence of by 'design' that interrogation would do nothing but muddle the science.

I made my way to the stairs, heading up towards my room once more in a hope that the solitude from everyone else in the house would help me pull apart the pieces of this convoluted puzzle. _'But is it so easy to just figure out the complexities of human emotions?'_ I wondered, _'Could one figure out such a thing with science and experimentation alone?'_

At least partially, yes. The rest could be cataloged through the interrogation method later.

As I ascended the stairs, I paused, unable to shake the feeling that I was being watched. It was the feeling of being unable to shake the onset of heavy, burning eyes staring holes into the back of your skull.

I turned around, towards the lower floor, eyes observing every detail of the familiar stationary surroundings. Was someone actually following me? Who would so discreetly follow someone in Wammy's House, not to mention _me_ of all people?

"Why are you following me?" I asked the air. If there was someone there, my voice would entice them out, whereas if indeed there was no one, then no one would hear the puzzling question.

A brown haired, pigtailed head peaked out from behind the bottom banister after a long moment. _'Linda.' _I gave a small sigh containing the urge to roll my eyes as I turned away from her. _'I shouldn't have even asked… it wasn't worth knowing.'_

"How did you know I was here?" Her meek voice piped up.

"You're asking _me_ how I knew?" I retorted as if my sheer intellectual and numerical standing above her should allude to the answer. In all actuality it really shouldn't; it wouldn't make sense for my standing to have any substantial precedence over my ability to tell if someone is following me. But what she doesn't know…

"True…" She muttered.

Naturally…

I stayed another second allowing the silence to fill the space between us before beginning up the steps, again. Her unwillingness to be forthcoming with her current agenda meant it wasn't anything serious; probably just another attempt of hers to get me to interact with the other kids of Wammy's House.

I'd never understand why she was always so determined to change the state of my social interaction level. I didn't get along with others. Or… rather, _they_ never seemed to get along with _me._ Truthfully speaking, I had just never done anything to fix that situation. I hardly saw how such a shift mattered in the long run as it would merely result in a circular line of events that I really didn't feel like furthering.

"Hey!" She called out for me, instantly I heard the sound of her feet against the wooden stairs trailing after me. "I just wanted to talk, that's all." She explained hesitantly. Her voice was nails on the chalkboard of my mind that held the extensive equation of deconstructed soul marks.

"So that's a valid excuse to follow me so secretly? I hardly see how that holds water, Linda."

"Well… you are kind of an intimidating person to try and have a conversation with, Near." She explained, walking beside me as we reached the second floor and I continued on down the path towards my room. She was always an oblivious girl… unable to read into a situation far enough to tell that perhaps the _reason _I am unconsciously that intimidating to have a conversation with is because I don't want to have those conversations. I have more important things to do then engage in idle, meaningless exchanges; especially at a time like this when that _name_ continues to pull at my every thought.

_'How am I supposed to shake her now…'_ I wondered as we continued on in an awkward silence. She always had a tendency to be like a leech when it came to fulfilling her agenda. _'This is certainly not the kind of distraction I need right now. Or ever, really…'_

"Did you have something specific you wanted to talk with me about? I'm a bit busy at the moment." I said without making eye contact with her.

"Um… not really." She was lying; I could tell by the stammer in her tone, "I just thought we could talk. You don't ever hang out with anyone, Near. It has to be lonely all by yourself..." She muttered to herself, her speech's volume trailing off at the end.

"No, not really."

She was silent once more and from the corner of my eye I could see her expression shift as her drive towards whatever her ultimate goal was begin to slip away; almost instantly though the fuel to her drive was filled back up. If only she wasn't so damn determined, or perhaps oblivious. It's unclear which when the two are so carelessly muddled together. "You still shouldn't be alone." She finally said.

"Linda, social interaction is of very little importance to me." I said as I reached my closed bedroom door; turning the gold doorknob to let it slide open immediately a rush of cool air was released out.

The air was a chilling, familiar, comfort in my lungs. I suppose people would judge my sense of solace in something as unattached and unloving as being a quality which deepened my robotic sense of self. Personally though, I find the feeling to be one of the most human things about myself. But then I don't usually subscribe to normal social constructs, so it made sense that they may see it in such a way.

I grit my teeth as I stepped into the room and Linda quietly followed, closing the door behind her and somehow unable to take my blatantly dropped hints that I needed to be alone right now. Above all other times, right now was when I needed isolation. There was a mystery on my mind, and I would not feel settled until I could pick it apart completely. '_What about that is so hard to grasp?'_ Regardless, manners dictated that I let her stay… So I said nothing, opting instead to go over to the side of the room where my toys were located to begin setting robots out in perfect formation.

From my peripheral view, I observed the way she looked around my room, taking everything in as she made her way across the threshold and took a seat on my bed positioned by the window. I felt myself visibly cringe I could almost feel the tear of the neatly made sheets crinkle under her.

_'Is it too much to ask for her to just sit on the floor?'_ My patience was wearing thin with Linda. While a part of me was interested in prying into her sudden determination to be around me, another equally sized part already had a good idea as to what it was. Dull...

I turned my full attention back to setting up my robots. "Linda…" I trailed off, looking up at her briefly as I placed two robots face-to-face in front of me. My tone made me feel like a disciplining parent, urging her to tell me her wrongdoing before she forced me to call her out on them.

"What?"

So _that_ was how this was going to be. It was obvious she wanted me to come out and say it for her so she didn't have to suffer the embarrassment. Fine, we would do things her way. It wasn't me on the receiving end of said embarrassment. Honestly, I didn't understand why anyone felt said emotion in the first place. If you genuinely want something, regardless of how misguided, then what's there to be ashamed of?

"You know that I know." I said, looking her directly in the eyes and watching the way they blatantly shifted between emotions. My thoughts drifted momentarily to my own soul mark resting beneath the concealing veil of my clothing, to the _male_ name I had memorized so many times over. To whoever had made the design, at least I could thank them for not placing me with her. Linda's blatant shift of readable emotions left nothing to my wonderment. She was ultimately nothing short of boring.

Her brown orbs darted between my eyes and the robots in front of me. That emotion was present… she was already embarrassed with a tinge of regret. Odd, we'd only just started dealing with the issue at hand. I raised one of the arms of the robots towards the other without breaking the eye contact.

"What?" She repeated.

"I know the real reason for your wanting to be around me so often." I told her, finally looking down at the robots to mess with the knobs on one. "I'm sorry to say I can't give that to you, Linda."

She drew back a bit. "What are you talking about?" I could almost hear her desperately trying to swallow down her embarrassment to exchange it with a feigned innocence of confusion.

"You're lying to me. Linda, you should know better." I said, looking back at her momentarily, "You want to find out." I stated vaguely, eyeing her hands, which had clenched together on her knees. I could tell she was doing it unconsciously from the way they loosened every few moments. Her movements gave words to her thoughts, showing her own conscious recognition that she was doing it and making an effort not to in order to remain outwardly natural, but her nerves would immediately get the better of her.

"How…" She swallowed, stopping herself. "Yeah…" Her voice immediately dropped off; her eyes became filled with an discernible sense of desperation and desire. It was an interesting moment to watch, to evaluate her to try and understand what could be going through her mind.

"I've already told you," I continued, "I can't give that to you."

Her jaw tightened, as did her hands on her knees. Her composure was breaking. But why? Embarrassment? No, it was something more than that, and desperation suddenly wasn't an encompassing enough adjective to cover it anymore.

I'd seen this emotion before, though not nearly as restrained as Linda was trying to keep it. Mello unknowingly showed me this state of mind all the time, and yet I still couldn't quite place it.

"Why?" She shot at me, her voice was short as she swallowed hard again to try and get a grip over herself to keep a semblance of her composure. "You don't care anyway."

I nodded, looking down at my robots and lowering the arm of the one that had previously been outstretched, instead moving the second one back a bit and raising both arms up. "You're right, I don't, which is why I can't let you do that."

"But… you know the probability-"

"It's not about probability, Linda." She didn't know anything about probabilities, it was just a guess. "It's about the game." I looked up, meeting her brown eyes once more. "You want to see if we're… soul mates," I stressed the word, "because despite my current knowledge of the fact that we are not, have you really thought of the consequences bonding would create if hypothetically we were?"

"Of course…"

I shook my head, "No, you've looked through your own deluded view of what might occur as brought on by a deluded notion of reality mixed with your own chemical responses. You haven't considered it in all _practicality_. Let's entertain the notion, for a moment that the possibility exists that we bear each other's names as our soul mark, I allow you to do this and we end up being soul mates. What does that do?"

"Well…"

"It opens up a mental connection." I took a small toy, a small figurine of a ninja and set it between the two other toys. "You would know all of my thoughts, and I would know yours. Beyond that, there's the idea of an emotional bond possibly eventually developing, as well. Who knows what that would entail? Currently I'm the first in line to become the next L. If anything shall happen to him I would take up the role and we would likely never see each other again. What do you suppose would happen then? Are you willing to live with that sense of loss and separation?"

"I could go with you…" She muttered meekly, her eyes deepening with sadness.

I shook my head, "No, that's not an option. Both because it would hinder my ability to do my job, and restrict the possibilities of what kind of lifestyle you would be allowed to partake in. In the end, it is not fair for either of us to take such a risk. Actually…" I began setting up all my other robots behind the first two. "It's not fair to the world. Do you understand?"

She was quiet, looking away. "Yeah… but…"

I looked down, avoiding the desire to sigh at her. She was proving to be such a stupid girl… overrun by her emotions and the chemicals in her brain telling her to look for love wherever it may be. Bonded soul mates didn't automatically create love. It couldn't. People don't work like that. Or, they shouldn't, anyway.

"But," I heard her feet hitting the wooden floor of the bedroom, "I'm willing to take that risk!" Before my eyes could look up or even begin to process her words, I was toppled further down onto the floor; suddenly Linda's body pinned me down.

My eyes widened as my heart jumped into my throat, racing out of control. My body went rigid under her weight; my eyes locked with hers and it was as if her flood of emotions had completely overtaken everything in my world. My thoughts and rational turned suddenly from the once clear sureness that the name printed across my chest could not belong to her because it was a male's name, to the new notion that perhaps some family had given this girl a male name upon birth. Perhaps there was a story behind such rationale that I'd never considered before due to the balance of probability. Perhaps there was the possibility...

A sudden carnal sense of urgency to escape took over. "Don't do this, Linda." I forced out, but I knew it was hitting deaf ears.

Her hand shot out.

"Don't!"

But it was too late.

I felt her warm, sweaty hand touch mine as her fingers forced their way to interlace with my own. My heart could not have hammered faster behind the frigid confines of its prison; my breathing had been caught dead in my throat. I closed my eyes, waiting for anything to happen yet at the same time knowing that I had no idea what I was even waiting for. How would I know? _Would_ we know?

Her fingers tightened around my hand. Desperate…

I let out a staggered breath. Nothing happened. Balance of probability wins out to the infinitesimally small chance of likelihood. My eyes reemerged, looking up from my place on the floor to her above me where her eyes were still shut, the lines of her face contorted into a mixture of pain and longing.

"Linda…"

After another second brown orbs slid open to meet mine. "S-sorry… Near." I could almost hear how tight her throat was constricted; I could feel the pain in her words. She'd wanted this more than anything, I realized. Why? How did she not see the flaw in her thought process? How could she let it cloud her judgment to make such a foolish error?

She finally moved, slowly getting up off me and staggering to stand awkwardly a few feet away from me, looking at the floor. I sat up, immediately contorting back into my familiar position, watching and evaluating her movements. Honestly, I couldn't even begin to imagine the acceptable words needed to remedy this situation.

"I'm sorry!" She repeated, turning on her heels and dashing from the room before I could make a move to stop her. Not that I would have…

Linda had been reckless in handling the situation; she'd let her heart do the deciding and it had decided wrong. I could only imagine that she was now hurting more than she had been before. She'd put too much faith in one idea while utterly neglecting the others.

I looked around, observing how all my toys had been knocked over in the outburst of her rashness. I placed a hand up over my chest, over my soul mark and my heart that raced beneath it. It still thumped wildly against my chest, trying to return to a normal pace. That had been too much of a close call, and only reaffirmed my idea that finding one's soul mate was ultimately a terrible idea.

But at the same time, as my eyes drifted up to the door she'd exited from and left wide open, I couldn't help feeling a newly formed interest in the subject, as well, stimulated by those feelings of urgency to escape, of practical _fear_. The mental bond between two people had been theorized as being an evolutionary trait to inevitably help people survive. But with time it had become just another romanticized ideal that people filled their brain with to block out the things that mattered.

However… what if it was used the other way around? Could it be possible to use such a tool _against_ someone as Linda had unconsciously just done? But why would someone want to? Wouldn't that inevitably hurt both parties if they're linked together in such a way? Perhaps… but what if one was strong enough to maintain a sense of control over the bond so as not to become part of the victim and instead use it to destroy the other person.

The effects could be quite interesting.

My heart slowly returned to its normal tempo the more I considered the subject and decided that more investigating needed to be done. This was beginning to turn into a very _interesting_ mystery.

* * *

A/N: I swear I never meant for this chapter to end up this long, but I felt like cutting this in half would make what would become the second chapter very dull by comparison. I want to thank everyone who reviewed the first chapter. You're support is amazing and I loved hearing from all of you and it has really reinvigorated my passion and confidence, so thank you, your comments always mean the world to me! Please be sure to let me know what you thought of this chapter as well.

Please review  
_-Forbiddensoul562_


	3. Could One Be So Cruel?

Disclaimer: Please see Chapter 1 for the full disclaimer.

* * *

Chapter 3: Could One Be So Cruel?

The space inside the confining prison of the four walls I'd entrapped the three of us in was palpable; the air grew thicker and more suffocating the longer I allowed silence to continue. But I needed the quiet of the moment to sort through my thoughts just as much as I needed it to begin my observations. Linda's hasty actions had caught me off guard, immediately filling me with a dreadful sense of icy apprehension as I lay beneath her on my floor that stopped my beating heart and hushed every thought in my head while I waited and counted each passing second with held breath for a change that only biology had the final say on.

I didn't like being without control; and more so I detested the idea of not being _consulted_ in my own life's decisions. At the very heart of it, it wasn't Linda's action themselves that inevitably put me on edge, as I could hardly blame her for taking the initiative to act how she felt necessary, regardless of how short-sighted it was.

It was nature itself that I was troubled by. No, in fact it wasn't even nature that irked me so malevolently.

It was this phantasmal image of God himself as the creator for whom I was ultimately angry with. If He did exist, if I did ultimately get my day of judgment in his presence after my death, I would certainly have a few choice words for Him.

For now, though, I was forced to play by nature, by _God's_ rules and instead merely make do with the precious few resources at my disposal to understand this weight he'd placed upon my skin.

My gaze shifted away from the three robot action figures I'd brought with me, instead locking my focus onto the current world playing out before me. Seated at the two front row desks of the empty classroom I'd claimed for the purpose of my investigation sat the only two bonded soul mates of Wammy's House.

They sat beside each other in relatively awkward silence. The girl, Mimi, fidgeted between tugging at the ends of her pleated skirt and brushing her fingers through the long brown hair hanging well over her shoulder. Her bonded partner, Ren, sat in stark, unfazed silence staring unfocused on the floor until he felt me watching him, at which point his hazel eyes moved up, narrowing on me. I could read into the message of his body language, that it was his own silent attempt to show he wasn't in the least bit intimidated by me. But it seemed only natural that he shouldn't be; what reason did he have to be intimidated at that moment? Why was everyone telling me I was intimidating, today?

"Is there a reason we're here?" Ren finally asked, his voice firm with me.

_'I wonder if they've been talking through that bond... They're body language has hardly changed in any way that would signal normal vocal communication.'_ I pondered, observing the way Mimi's green eyes slid over at Ren and her fingers came to a halt in her hair.

"I just had a few questions I'd like to ask you two, considering it's become so common knowledge that you've discovered your paired soul marks and established a bond with one another."

Ren shifted back a bit in his seat while Mimi's eyes finally moved up to me, to which I returned the stare as I immediately grew more curious by their blatant paradigm shift. "I'm interested first particularly in how you got to such a state." I proceeded while mentally drawing up a list by which to log their responses, both vocal and physical.

"Mimi's the one who figured it out." Ren stated in a much more reserved voice as a small smile appeared across his features. He looked over at her and she nodded, continuing their answer, "Yeah, I'd always felt something for him."

"How exactly did you go about finding what his soul mark was?" I pushed.

"I didn't." She stated with a small shrug of her shoulders, "I tried to find reasons to accidentally touch his hands." A soft, nostalgic smile played across her features with every word she uttered. "He can be rather oblivious sometimes. He managed to avoid me and all of my attempts, so eventually I just took his hand one day in the hall."

My brow creased together, "So you forced your will onto him even though his evident body language alone suggested what his wishes were."

Her smile fell away from her facial features as her emerald eyes shifted worriedly over to Ren, whose own figure had grown rigid though he met her look and I could only imagine he was consoling her through their bond. But observing the way they behaved in that moment took second priority to the physical responses they'd each unknowingly drawn my attention to.

_'What did their individual reactions to my statement say about Ren, Mimi and their bond?'_ I pondered, _'Clearly it screams that he was uncomfortable by her advances. Likewise it adamantly claims that he must have buried his feelings down upon establishment of the bond to the point that somehow Mimi has never even considered such a possibility.'_ At the very heart of it all it proved that there were indeed things that could be kept hidden despite sharing a bond of linked thoughts and feeling. But how?

I exhaled, "Sorry, that was a bit forward of me," _'but it was quite revealing of both human nature and desires,' _"Allow me to change the subject."

I took hold of two robots in front of me while my gaze moved downwards, "In terms of distance, how far does the mental bond between you stretch?" I inquired. If Ren did indeed keep things from Mimi then it alluded to the fact that there were times she could not hear his thoughts, or any doubts or repressed grudges he may still retain.

"It's about ten to twelve feet right now." He answered, verifying my conclusion that he knew and had tested the spatial limits of their mental link to each other. "It expands though depending on the state of our bond with each other, the relationship and the feelings between us." Mimi answered.

_'That's very interesting.'_ I thought to myself, _'So depending on how a person feels about the other person the strength of the bond adjusts accordingly for their ability to communicate and share emotions with each other.'_ "It's rather common knowledge that it's not just thoughts that transfer between the bonds. I suppose it's safe to assume that you experience this?" My questions continued as my mind mulled over each new piece of information.

Ren nodded but Mimi answered again, "We tend to influence each other. I can feel when Ren's angry, upset, happy, or any emotion." The subtle, soft smile returned to her face, "The channel has a way of making me feel that way too."

"So it's a shared channel of empathy." I interjected.

She nodded, "In a way, but it's more than that, too. It's not just that I _understand_ what he's feeling. Sometimes it's like it's me that's being bothered by whatever it is that's troubling him, even if he's not around me for me to know what's happening. Even if I don't know what's happening, I can still experience what he's experiencing if it's strong enough of a feeling." She gave a small shrug as she finished, "It makes things easier sometimes."

"Seems as though that would just complicate quite a lot." I said nearly under my breath.

"Why are you so interested in all of this, anyway?" Ren asked me, the firm and almost spiteful tone reappearing in his words. "Or are you looking to actually take the leap with someone?" His eyebrows raised expectantly, but with an air of condescension.

"I assure you that is now where close to my goal in this investigation. I'm merely curious as to the technical aspects of soul marks as well as why people would be so _foolish_ as to go through with the act of bonding." I responded without sparing him a glance as I made the robots attack one another. This was _my_ investigation and as such it was only polite for me to be the one asking the questions between us. I'd thought manners were an easy enough concept to understand, but I suppose everyone has their own shortcomings in the most unexpected places.

"How does Roger feel about your bond?" I continued.

"He doesn't care too much so long as we don't go too far with it." Mimi answered, her cheeks reddening in a blush that spoke the words to the point she was too modest to say.

Their response troubled me. I felt as though I should be surprised to know that Roger could care less about children 'taking the leap' under his institution's roof so long as copulation wasn't a part of their relationship. But when I considered the facts I suppose such a rational only made sense. Sure the two's thoughts were bonded, sure they still both made an effort to compete for the title of L, but I could only assume that it was precisely because they were not close to the top of the race that stricter measures had not been enforced by Roger. At the heart of it, Roger stood to neither lose nor gain much by letting them continue.

"I see." I answered blandly, "I suppose that's all the questions I wish to ask you for the moment." I gathered my toys up into my arms as I stood from the chair behind the teacher's desk, "I appreciate you both explaining the nature of your bonds with me. If I have any further questions I'll be sure to find you." With that I started from the empty classroom back out into the relatively barren halls of the orphanage.

_'Ren and Mimi have proven to be rather dull subjects._' I thought.

Sure, the two could answer my questions but speaking with them felt more like reading off an answer key to a test. The key itself indeed displays the correct answers which I sought to obtain, but at the same time it failed to delve at all into the actual _process_ of how the answer was obtained.

I felt as though speaking with the two of them had catapulted me from point A to point D without seeing how anyone would otherwise clear the letters between the points.

_'What am I to do?'_ I wondered to myself as I trudged through the halls without a clear destination in mind. _'Perhaps it would be best to let this mystery go. No, that's not a good idea. For as fickle and shallow as the entire concept itself is, there also exists a significant amount of value in working to understand the process on a technical, and rational basis.'_ I told myself, _'I'm sure there will be plenty of cases in the future that will include soul marks and bonds as a major role.'_

Beneath my shirt I could feel the psychosomatic prickling sensation of my own soul mark begging to be allotted its own amount of attention; as if making itself known alone asserted that I cared at all about the knowledge of the being behind the name. I could freely admit that I was interesting in knowing, but it wasn't something I could ever go so far as to seek out nearly as desperately as Mimi had done.

_'Who would this God have made my soul mate?'_ I considered, _'How could such a thing even exist for someone like me? Perhaps, God simply picked someone entirely random merely to have names to place unto us. Perhaps there's no planning behind my soul mark at all.' _

My thoughts drifted deeper into the mystery as a new curiosity made itself known, _'But what if the name I possess lies in someone like Mimi, or Linda, who actually wants to actively search for their soul mate? If that's the case, then what a cruel joke God has played on that person. The more I think about it the less I'm coming to like this creator...'_

Thud!

A force in front of me stopped all my depreciating thoughts, sending the robots that had ben nestled in my arms clanging onto the floor as I ran headfirst into the barrier and stumbled back in surprise. A flare of warm embarrassment was shot through my body, "I'm sorry," I forced out quickly, "I was-."

My gaze rose, meeting familiar azure orbs. "Oh, Mello." I said in an annoyed exhale, "I apologize, my thoughts were elsewhere." I could hear the sudden raise of defenses in my own guarded words.

Mello had proven himself to be nothing short of a bomb. Not a time bomb, as that would be _far_ too easy and exponentially more boring. No, Mello was the sort of bomb that lay buried beneath the ground which became triggered by anything from the slightest temperature fluctuation to the pressure of being stepped on.

As I stared into his orbs of stewing animosity I felt as though our accidental contact with one another was more than enough to trip his pressure switch. Now the game became whether to work to diffuse him before he went off, or entice him into a relatively controlled state of destruction.

_'If I don't believe in the god that's been so centralized to my own malice recently, perhaps I could learn to believe in karma.'_ I quickly thought, as the more or less verbal assault I gave Mello this morning would certainly not help me in any diffusion plans I attempted to carry out.

"What the hell?" His stare narrowed coldly on me, and instantly he stepped back to pass beside me, shooting a glare as he did so, "Watch where you're going."

"Speak for yourself." He could have told himself he was the better person and let my mistake go and simply went on his way. Instead even I could feel his inferiority complex insisting that he engage me to get any upper hand he could. "You could have moved out of my way." I commented as he stopped beside me, our shoulders practically on level with each other.

"What the hell was your deal this morning?" He demanded to know, but I could hear the underlying statement his curt words were poorly alluding to: _'That's not like you.'_ As thought he had a right to make any such judgment.

"Nothing. I was simply point out facts I felt would benefit you to know."

"You mean 'facts' that you have no right to make." Ah, the parallelism between our thoughts and words. I wondered if he noticed it too; I wondered if he found it nearly as intriguing as I did. Probably not... "If you knew what was good for you you'd keep that shit to yourself from now on." He added stiffly, the terse words dripping with spite.

Had my earlier comments really bothered him that much? Honestly I'd thought he had a stronger reserve than _that_. My eyes turned to where he stood beside me facing the opposite direction, barely having to turn my head to observe how strained his features were.

"Mello," His name left my lips in an exhale just the way I knew he utterly despised, the way that caused him to hear condescension in whatever words I uttered after it, "Have you ever considered that perhaps if you stop taking everything I say so personally and instead implement it, then you may actually begin to become a threat to my position in the race?"

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mello's fist clench at his side. How was it that my words could always push him to such a state so very quickly? What exactly was brewing beneath the crown of gold upon his head?

"Shut up." He said, bringing my thoughts to an immediate stop. "Don't act like you know anything about what happens in my life, let alone have the right to say anything about how I live it. You think you know everything about everyone and _everything_ around you, Near." He practically spit out my name, and again I could hear the statement hidden behind the clenched teeth the words escaped through: _'You don't know what it's like for everyone to live in your shadow.'_

"It's my job to know these things." I reached to grab a lock of hair, knowing the exact connotation my perfectly chosen words would have to him. I could practically hear the gears in Mello's body grinding tightly together as they tried to maintain normal functions; I could almost see the steam rise from him as every system inside him attempted to hold back the eminent explosion I'd set to go off, as though exploding at this point meant losing rather than the required controlled release of steam I'd mused on earlier that morning.

A single pale lock of hair spun around my index finger as my resolve to hold back and let this pass began to slip away. _'In the end, Mello only brought this upon himself. I may only be a fraction of an inch closer to understanding the purpose and potential use of soul marks, but at least there's one thing I know entire mechanics behind. In the end mechanics are all you really need to be able to manipulate well.'_

"Mello," I continued in a hushed voice, "Hopefully I'm correct in assuming that you do realize it's not your duty to match me mannerism for mannerism, right? You hardly contain the necessary levels of self-control needed to attempt to act in such a fashion, anyway."

It was the final unconscious push needed to throw Mello's internal systems over the edge and ultimately bust at the seams. He grabbed the front of my shirt almost immediately; his grip was deathly tight over me, keeping me at once locked within such a close proximity to him. My entire body went rigid as he brought us back to stare at each other. I knew Mello had a very waning level of self-control, but as I he became the only thing I could see the only thing I could think was to scold myself for miscalculating the spatial distance needed before verbally firing at Mello.

"_That's_ what you think?" He asked, keeping his tone dreadfully even so as not to bring attention from anyone inside the rooms around us.

For as precarious as I'd pushed the situation to divulge into, the only thought which crossed my mind in that instant became: _'His ability to maintain control over himself when he's angry is quite surprising considered how much he struggled with it only a moment ago...' _Perhaps there were still quirks within his mechanics that I had yet to discover.

"You've given me no reason to think otherwise." I answered, meeting his silent dare without a thought and instantaneously putting it upon _his_ shoulders to decide how he was going to let this play out.

His grip tightened around my shirt's material, our stares drilled into one another, "How can you be so _stupid_?" The volume in his words was rising.

The urge for the game pricked my tongue and my lips like cactus needles, tortuously urging me to spit the words that immediately rose to my mind. Something in Mello's demeanor always found a way to push me over my own level of control, allowing me to play the game of chance and roll the dice to see just how he would respond back to the challenge. I saw no reason why this should be any different. The bomb had already been triggered far beyond the point of hoping to diffuse him; the negative karma had already been sewed into my fate.

"Perhaps if you're ever able to actually beat me and rise from second place you won't have to ask such questions; instead you'll just read the answers you need."

That was definitely too far, and even I was willing to admit it. My roll had been bad; the line had been well crossed over.

I watched as the very time and space surrounding us slowed down. Mello's eyes narrowed on me in an emotion I couldn't read with all the warning signal bells firing off at once in my head. I saw the way his arm pulled back as the last remnants of his resolve snapped and the floodgates were fully opened.

_'Protect yourself.'_ I ordered, knowing I didn't have much time to issue the commands to my extremities before it was too late.

My arms immediately rose up defensively against the oncoming assault. My hands turned outward over my head in a move demonstrated across the times as the signal for mercy against imminent violence. But there was no such sentiment to be had here; I doubted Mello even knew the definition of such a term when it involved me anyway.

For as slow as time was moving it felt like only a split second before the blow was firmly struck and I felt his fist collide against my outstretched hands that perilously worked to block my face.

I had anticipated and braced myself for the feeling pain at being struck, but the worry and fear I'd previously held was wiped away and instantly replaced by a new surge of agony that ripped its way beneath the plating of my skull. I immediately realized that it was not the physical blow Mello had dealt I was feeling, but instead some other sensation, as though his attack on me had released a wildfire upon the very neurons of my brain.

"Ah!" Mello's grip over my clothing was gone with his loud gasp of pain and as I struggled to look up at him, I saw the way his fingers threaded into the tresses of his gold locks and his eyes squeezed shut against his own afflictions, I knew he was feeling the same thing I was.

_'Nate.'_

The name resounded again through my memory as the connection back to a past I'd fought to not hold on to sent a wave of ice coursing through my veins. The name, the breath catching in my throat, the surge of pain being shot through every fiber of my brain brought me to my knees.

_'Nate.'_

My stare locked onto Mello's own as his eyes slid back open, and it was in that moment that I saw every ounce of the alarm he felt within him suddenly written across his every feature. We were having the same damning thought.

"It's seems..." I struggled to force out, "I've misjudged both you and the cruelty of God." I managed as excruciating shots of the electricity jolted through my system and weakened my body, causing my head to swim and my world to fade from its once clear and sharp stability to begin shifting in and out of focus.

"Mihael." I spoke in a whisper the name, the _promise_, the _design _that'd been etched into my flesh and which had tormented me endlessly through my entire life. "I'm sorry." The horror which seeped into Mello's widened sapphire eyes was all the verification I needed to see as my world was suddenly consumed in black.

The last thing I heard through my mind was the scream of anguished pleas, _"No. No, no no! No!"_ The thoughts were not my own.

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A/N: So, what did you think about all of that, hm? Writing this chapter made me realize that I'd forgotten just how much of a dick my first person Near is (as if my third person one is any better, really...) I apologize if the editing job on this is a bit sloppier than my usual final product is, but I've quite literally been up all night working on this so please bear with me. As always, if you would be so kind as to let me know what you think and thought of this I would greatly appreciate hearing from you!

Please review  
_-Forbiddensoul562_


	4. Could You Be Such a Puzzle?

Disclaimer: Please see Chapter 1 for full disclaimer.

* * *

Chapter 4: Could You Be Such a Puzzle?

_"Wake up."_

My unconscious world was at once consumed by an invisible fog of comfortable silence mixed with a peculiarly unwarranted sense of calm. In that moment of utter separation from the world I found myself to be only halfway conscious of the previous events that had occurred -as though I was unable to discern whether any of it had happened or if it had merely been a terrible dream.

But the looming emotions swirling inside me reminded me of the events I'd allowed to transpire. It all began to filter back into my memory: the sudden, unanticipated assault of a bomb detonating. The fear of what should have come next. The unexpected jolting pain that followed instead. The _regret_ of pursued idle curiosity.

I wanted to just let myself become further lost and entangled within the web of wherever this darkness had spun for me to take refuge within.

_"Wake up."_

Something tugged at the loose strands of my thoughts, urging me up out of the haze I'd somehow become locked within, like perceptively trained hands plunging into the fog to shepherd me to not only freedom, but also the cruel reality on the outskirts that I could ultimately only blame on myself.

I felt a sense of dread swell in my center. How many apologies would I be forced to utter to atone for this grievous sin I'd committed? Couldn't I just be left within this static miasma for but a moment longer so as to collect the remnants of my shattered self-confidence?

_"Wake up!"_

Apparently not...

My eyes snapped open, trading the dark void of my unconscious for the shadows of what I quickly observed to be the infirmary of Wammy's as I pushed myself to sit up in the bed I'd been lying in. The room had fallen into utter silence for the night, everything left frozen in its own respective place -the beds around me were made up with crisp white sheets, the contents of the cupboards all nearly organized behind their glass doors.

Suddenly a dull throb began to manifest behind the area of my left eye began to exude a dull throb, as if my brain was physically protesting being awoken before being given enough time to properly rest. That being said… _'How long have I been out?'_ I wondered as my fingers threaded through my hair as if to grip the painful area of my head.

"Ten hours."

My gaze darted over to the source of the icy words that'd answered my questions, instantly met with a dark form haloed by a frame of blonde hair that was somehow visible even through the dusk, and the biting blue orbs that stared daggers through me from where he was positioned beside my bed on a wheeled, circular chair like a nocturnal cat stalking its prey.

I sighed, "What are _you_ doing here?" The disdainful tone to my voice was beginning to sound natural.

Before I could even think to calculate a countermeasure, Mello's lithe form shot off the chair and grabbed me; at once it was as though we were transported back to that defining, _damning_ moment all over again. Except this time I wasn't even considering backing down from him. The damage had already been done; what more could Mello really do?

His grip on the front of my shirt was tight enough to practically stop the blood flow to his fingers, his stare was positively deadly, but that wasn't what set the warning signs blaring throughout my system. It was the fact that as I stared straight back into his eyes I could _feel_ the hot sense of loathing pumping through his veins as though it was my own cognizant reaction. Beneath the surface of the blue oceans that wanted nothing more than to drown me I could hear the screaming current of manic terror that raged.

"Why?" He breathed from behind his cracked veneer of composure.

"I didn't-."

"Don't!" He shook me once roughly, "Don't do it." He warned and like the thinnest of thread leading from my mind into his I felt exactly what he was demanding of me. I couldn't just placate him by spouting the words he wanted or even needed to hear. Right now he needed more than a simple appeasement, no, the only thing he _deserved_ to hear from me was the truth.

I couldn't necessarily argue with that, either, for any other reason than for my own physical well-being. But even then, a murmur in the back of my mind told me that perhaps my physical health was exactly the sacrifice I needed to offer up as the atonement for my sin.

His breath came out ragged as he fought to hold on to the last strings of his collectedness. I felt a new warning bell I hadn't realized had been installed in my mind go off, warning me that Mello knew that I was touching upon his thoughts and his emotions, "Tell me why." He forced out with an emotion strung in that I couldn't quite discern. "_Why_ would you do this?"

We both waited in painful silence, each of us counting the seconds that ticked by in each other's eyes. Mello counted down to his own pre-conceived timer to justifiable physical action while I counted how many seconds he could hold the pieces of himself together.

He finally snapped and I logged down the time, _'Eight seconds,'_ as he harshly shook me once more, "Answer me dammit!"

"There's nothing I _can_ say, Mello." I could almost feel his grip somehow tighten further around the collar of my shirt, "I can't tell you why because there is no definite reason for why, Mello." I elaborated before each of us could begin counting again, "You overstepped the course of action I had calculated would occur and so I defended myself how I could. That's all there really is to it."

His look hardened on me and I immediately felt a wave of fire seep into my blood stream. My instant reaction told me to fight against him, to pull out of his grip and get away from him and the blaze he setting within me; as though whatever minimal distance I could achieve would realistically do anything to make the feeling stop. "That's all you can say?" He demanded. "Do you have _any_ idea what you've done?"

"Of course."

His jaw locked in place and he released me with one final shove, yet his dangerous azure stare never faltered from my own smoldering gaze, _"You have no clue what's happened."_ I heard him think to himself as he took a step away from me.

My look narrowed on him, "I may lack otherwise basic life and social skills, but I'm not a fool." How dare he think me so naïve. _'Mihael.'_

I watched Mello's entire body grow rigid; immediately I felt the icy chill that name sent rushing down his spine not because of the divine joke of a connection established between us, but because it was exactly how I'd felt when he'd unknowingly spoken my name to Matt just that morning. How quickly lives can change…

"Don't!" He said forcibly. Mello's tightened expression turned away from me as one of his hands shot up to stop me, splayed out in the reminiscent sign of mercy that was so parallel to the very moment that'd gotten us into this situation. Did that make me now the aggressor? The assaulter? How interesting… "Just… don't. Don't say that." He continued, dropping his hand back to his side, "You clearly don't understand just what you've done here, and the things this has set in motion."

"I believe you're being a bit dramatic."

He gave a heavy sigh of frustration, "You're an idiot, Near." The words fell from his lips to meet the air, but as naturally as if he'd merely paused for breath the communication at once began passing through the space charged by the invisible channel crossing our thoughts. _"Bonded soul mates aren't something that they tolerate here, Near! The only reason that one couple aren't dealt with is because they're not high enough in the competition to matter! This is entirely different."_

_'I already presumed as much.'_

Mello's form was still tense as he began moving towards the door out of the clinic; my gaze continued to follow after him. With his silent, secretive words there appeared a new aura that seemed to surround him like a musky cloud that clogged the air and was increasingly plaguing him down to the very marrow of his bones. The fire that he'd started in my veins was replaced with this new sense that alerted me to the anxiety plaguing the blonde to step foot outside the temporarily universe of privacy that this room gave us. The connection empathetically shared the brunt of what Mello was feeling; my own understanding translated it back into exactly what it was.

_'You're worried, Mello.'_

He stopped immediately and I could only begin to wonder what he was able to hear behind my thoughts. _"You're not telling anyone about this."_ He responded with a sense of gravity in his every word so I would pay perfect attention to him, _"Not a soul is going to know that any of this happened. If you so much as breathe a word of it to anyone, Near, I swear I will carve that name out of your chest so that no one will ever be able to prove it."_

My look hardened on him further, _'That's rather arrogant of you, Mello, to think you could play God.'_

_"If I have to play God to become the best then that's exactly what I'm going to do."_ I couldn't help wondering if he'd meant for me to even hear the thought at that point.

_'I don't doubt you,'_ Were the only words I could offer as his enigmatic form slipped out the door of the infirmary back into the halls of the orphanage.

The room around me fell back into silence, but through the dull throb within my brain came alive the processes required to begin compiling notes on the events that'd transpired between Mello and I just now, as well as log the ones still occurring despite the growing distance. As I let my eyes slip closed to block out the stale world of the visual spectrum, the vast array of the mental realm took hold in its place.

Without the distraction of my eyes I could immediately pinpoint Mello moving down the hall. He existed to me in that moment as little more than a cloud of whirling emotions all balled together in one spot.

I couldn't see where he was, I couldn't distinguish his general location, but I could _feel_ his presence. I could still hear his thoughts…

_"What the hell am I supposed to do now?"_ I heard him tell himself. _"I can't risk telling Matt about this. That'd just complicate things further..."_ I could hear in his tone how the very notion of keeping something so integral from one's own best friend tugged at a sensitive string in Mello's heart that otherwise fought to remain as practical as the situation called for. I couldn't help but feel a bit surprised by his level-headed decision.

To keep things from Roger and the rest of Wammy's was one thing, but it was another thing entirely to consciously recognize the importance of withholding such a serious piece of information from someone as close as Matt was to Mello.

_'How long will he be able to hold on to such a vow? I give him two weeks at the very most.'_ I mused to myself.

_"Stop listening to my thoughts!"_ Mello's words cut through my own contemplation. _"You're not nearly as quiet as you seem to think, Near."_

_'Mello, I don't care for listening to your thoughts nearly as much as I care to gauge the range of the connection.'_ I justified. This certainly was quite the interesting, and volatile development I'd plunged us into…

_"Right."_ He read straight through me.

_'How far are you from the infirmary?'_ I pressed.

I felt the immediate swell within Mello's self-confidence as he took the question as a chance to gain a position of power over me and my actions. Like the fires of hate and the opposing wall of hesitance and worry this too I felt leak into my own mental state. At once it was as though I was being given a subtle feeling of invincibility. Not against Mello, interestingly, but everything else that may be out there. I exhaled slowly as the feeling of momentary dominance washed over me.

Oh yes, this would certainly be _quite_ the dangerous development.

_"You're the one gauging distance, you figure it out."_ Mello toyed with that controlling tone evident in his words; at once I could feel him resume walking away from me through the building. How typical of him to feign practicality when he needed it for his own peace of mind, yet immediately throwing it to the wayside in the moments where it actually mattered…

I could only give a small exhale as I felt his presence move further away and the connection begin to fade from my mind, leaving both a new sense of quiet solitude in its place and no way for me to work to figure out how far we had to be to hear each other's thoughts. I lay back against the bed and stared up at the pale ceiling overhead as I counted the thuds of pain striking just behind my eye.

_'What happened to us?'_ I wondered to myself as I again reached up and threaded my fingers through the strands of hair to cover the painful area. _'Mimi and Rin never mentioned anything of that sort happening when I questioned them about creating their connection. Even if the human brain is programmed to not remember pain over time, you would think that such a powerful experience would be something they'd mention.'_

My brow furrowed upon the smooth white plane above me, _'Perhaps they didn't mention it because they didn't have the same experience that Mello and myself did. If that is indeed the case then why was our reaction to the creation of the connection so intense when others are not?'_

The increasing pain in my head ushered my eyes to slip closed, meeting the familiar black that lay behind my lips. I instead began focusing my thoughts on counting the cycles of pressure over my eye to calm the unending stacks of wonders and questions that were still forming just enough to be able to find some comfort in sleep. In a passing thought I justified to myself that a moment of rest was crucial to the case, as working under less than perfect condition would ultimately only compromise the investigation if I attempted to force its progress.

After all, sometimes a detective's strongest weapon is his patience.

-:-

It was the rays of sun pouring in through the large windows of the clinic which next guided me out of my dreamless sleep and back to the real world. My eyes slipped open once more and I allowed my focus to peer around the bright area, taking note of the few nurses sitting at a station across the room chatting with one another. I couldn't help musing how interesting it was how the mere addition of light turned a room that once rivaled the desolateness of a morgue into something much more lively.

_'Perhaps everything last night was a dream...' _I thought to myself as I pushed myself up from where I'd been lying down, in the back of my mind I scoffed at the idiotic idea. Assuming that the events the previous night with Mello had been a dream would inadvertently imply that _everything_ from that day had been a dream as well. There was simply no way I could be that lucky.

"Well good morning." Came a voice at my side. I looked over to see Roger sitting upon the same chair Mello had been on the previous night. This was all beginning to seem too similar to each other… Perhaps I did actually have some luck to spare.

"Roger? What are you doing here?" I asked curiously, shifting to sit up fully and pull my legs into their comfortable position around my body as he closed the book he'd been reading as I slept.

"I came to check in on how you were doing." He stated, resting his book which was covered by images of bugs on the cover upon his knee, his beady eyes watched me. "What do you remember of yesterday?"

My mind, no longer plagued by the resounding painful pressure shot into full action, picking apart his words and expression in a matter of seconds, though there was very little to read there. _'What exactly does he expect me to say?'_

It was at that moment that I began to wonder if there was any chance he could possibly know what had happened between Mello and I. Was he looking to get some form of a confession out of me? Was he looking to bargain with me about what to do now that Mello and I had a connection and thus obviously needed to be handled?

Mello's threatening words echoed through my ears again, _You're not telling anyone about this… If you so much as breathe a word of it to anyone, Near, I swear I will carve that name out of your chest.'_ I wasn't scared of Mello, but I was scared of the potential laden weight given to the title of 'soul mates', especially within these walls.

"Not much." I answered vaguely, yet filled with the growing pressure weighing on my shoulders of maintaining the lie.

I remembered nearly everything of the confrontation between Mello and myself, as well as the feelings of electricity shooting through my body the moment the connection had been made. I remembered the terrifying feeling of alarm that I still couldn't discern as either my own or Mello's. But I did remember the desperate mental scream I'd heard Mello give. I remembered uttering the apology that allowed the very air of regret to sew itself deep within my core.

"What happened to me?" I asked, feeling it safer to spin the situation for Roger to speak and reveal anything he thought he knew instead of allowing him to place the focus on me. The more he made me talk the more opportunities presented themselves for me to say something potentially damning.

Roger chuckled lightly as he pulled his glasses off his face to gently spin them between his wrinkled fingers, "Thankfully nothing serious." He began. "The doctor couldn't find anything wrong with you. He said it was probably just a case of severe exhaustion." There was a sort of dull humor underlying Roger's voice that spoke of how well he knew everyone here and the stresses each person dealt with. This was not the first time he'd dealt with this from the orphans here, but it _was_ the first time dealing with it with me.

"Exhaustion..." I tried out the excuse, feeling the lie bite into my tongue with metallic feedback.

"Yes. It's a good thing that's all it was." Roger said with a nod, "We were quite worried about you."

My brow furrowed together as my stare moved from the white sheets that lay creased around me up to Roger's observant features, "We?"

He nodded once more, "Yes. Mello and myself."

"Mello?" A million questions raced through my head, ones I hadn't even thought to raise to him the night before when he'd appeared like a phantom at my bedside; when he'd swept me up out of the endless void of my unconscious sleep and back to the land of the living for his own selfish, pointless interrogation.

Why had he been at my bedside other than to reprimand me for putting us into the position we were in? What had he told Roger? How long _had_ Mello been waiting there beside my bed? Had he been there the entire ten hours? What was he thinking? I immediately remembered feeling the traces of worry upon his character that he had tried so hard to keep away from me. Why?

_'Could there exist such a large divide between us that in such a short time Mello could master his own internal conflict just enough to be able to haphazardly hide it from me?'_ I wondered to myself,_ 'Could he sense the motive within me that, if given the leverage to such sensitive knowledge of the emotions he keeps locked away, even I don't know if I could stop myself from using it against him?' _I _had_ wanted to investigate the manipulation of connections as it could be used against one's destined partner, after all...

"Yes, Mello." Roger repeated, bringing my attention out of my own considerations, "Honestly I was as surprised to hear what he'd done as anyone else was. What I understand to have happened from what the staff told me, Mello told them you two were conversing in one of the hallways when you collapsed. It was Mello who brought you here to be evaluated."

_'So he didn't black out like I did.'_ I concluded; finding myself curious as to why it had been me that had succumbed to the painful experience and not Mello as well. It had been rather obvious at the time that both of us had been feeling the exact same pain. _'Why was it only me?'_

"I visited a short time yesterday while you were sleeping but he was rather quiet about the whole thing. It was obvious that he was pretty worried about you, though," A smile crossed Roger's face as he stayed looking down at his glasses in his hands, "Apparently he didn't leave here till very late last night."

He paused a long moment in obvious contemplation, "For as long as I've known that boy I still can never quite read him, let alone predict the things he's going to do."

"No one can. I doubt even Mello himself can."

Roger nodded, looking up at me, "I suppose it just goes to show that regardless of what people show you on the outside, there is always much more to them beneath the surface." He held up his closed book, "You can't get all the information from this book just by reading both the covers. You have to take the time to look inside and read everything it has to offer."

_'That may be true, but how exactly should I proceed when the content of the said book are written in a language I don't speak?' _

Clearly if things were ever going to progress between Mello and I would have to overcome the immense wall of a language barrier built between us. Suddenly the connection we'd established seemed a bit like cheating… I added yet another mental stick atop the growing tower of reasons I had to regret letting this happen.

Roger stood up from his seat beside me, straightening out his pressed slacks as he did. "The nurses told me to inform you that you are free to leave whenever you feel ready to do so. But, Near, you would do well to offer Mello some gratitude for what he's done when you see him next. Who knows what will happen." He suggested with a smile.

_'Yes, who knows indeed…'_

Sure, perhaps Mello did have many distinct regions of his personality that no one had seen before, but I had every reason to believe that none of those areas held even the smallest space that did not loath me with its every fiber.

I pushed back the blankets to climb out the side of the bed, and as my clothed feet touched the cold tile of the floor and I stood on my own I couldn't help feeling as though I was suddenly standing as someone fundamentally different than I'd been merely twenty-four hours ago.

Somehow it now felt as though, even if metaphysically speaking alone, it was no longer just _me_ residing in this body anymore. Within the hardened sealed wax to a divine promise I now understood better than ever before, I was beginning to fully realize that through the bond created by our soul marks Mello had just as much access to my subconscious as I did to his.

Within his grasp he had all the potential power to use my thoughts and my emotions to his own selfish benefit in quite the same way that I had unknowingly wanted to do to him. The only thing I had wanted was to experiment and observe the results of purposely destroying divine creation.

But Mello…

Mello had whispered dangerous threats to carve me open if I so much as spoke a single word of what we had done to anyone. Yet in the very same day, even when he _knew_ what I had done to us, he had made the conscious decision to take it upon himself to bring me somewhere safe when I could not do it myself; when perhaps predestined fate had become too much to handle.

"Thank you for telling me, Roger, I will be sure to have a word with him when I see him." I muttered.

In fact, was most definitely going to require more than just a few words with Mello. _'You'd think that Mello would know by now that if he really wanted to keep a distance between us then he should not place such an interesting puzzle before me to solve.'_

* * *

A/N: I was a bit wary about length when I planned this chapter because it seemed a bit… Well, dull. But I think it turned out relatively well, all things considered. Thank you all so much for your wonderful reviews, feedback and favorites. I say it a lot but I cannot begin to tell you what it means to me to hear your thoughts! As usual there are things in this that I am iffy about, but there are also things I enjoyed about it. Regardless, I am much more interested in hearing what all of you has to say about this!

Please review  
_-Forbiddensoul562_


	5. Could It Be Betrayal?

Disclaimer: Please see Chapter 1 for full disclaimer.

* * *

Chapter 5: Could It Be Betrayal?

Altruism. Noun. Definition: the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others. Was Mello's decision to bring me to the infirmary considerable to the definition of altruism, or had it all merely been a neatly cloaked act of pure egotism? _'Is it even remotely possible to consider anything Mello does as altruistic?'_ I found myself wondering.

I immediately stopped the line of thought there before it was granted life. Of course it was possible.

Put between him and I, Mello was always the more compassionate one. Naturally, he did things only when he felt it would benefit him -a quality which immediately reminded me of myself. However, the ultimate deciding factor which constructed the fundamental difference between our core beings was Mello's heart, harbored deep within his chest that frequently took control over the decision making portion of his brain.

While on the outside Mello's actions may be conducted through the desire to benefit himself, a closer look into his eyes revealed the constant swirl of turning azure gears which spelled the words of how he never did anything without first observing it through the murky film of how said actions would affect those involved.

Though, at the same time, it wasn't in Mello's biology to include me into that brief moment of benevolent consideration. To him, I didn't deserve even that small amount of time. For in his eyes I don't exist as a human being, but instead more of a figurehead placed in constant opposition against everything he stood for.

But this had been different.

Where did all of this turmoil leave us standing? Where did that put _him_? What was going through his head right now?

For the first time I thanked God for the cheat sheet he had handed me to help uncover the workings of His divine joke.

It was on the upper floors of the orphanage, where everyone's bedrooms resided, where I was halted in my search for the blonde by a warm, tingling sensation beginning to creep up through my extremities. At once it was as though my brain had been drenched by a downpour of warm water. The prickling feeling lifted from my fingers and arms up through my lungs, my heart, and finally into my thoughts until my previously known solitary peace was completely overtaken with chaotic noise breaking the silence.

My eyes flashed over to his sealed bedroom door, the very doorway which had catalyzed all of this madness. The chill of resentment oozed up into my veins, and in that moment I felt lost within it, unable to sensibly discern whether this feeling was originating from him or me.

As my eyes closed to shut out the rest of the world I told myself that clearly it was the former of the two options.

_'Mello.'_ I thought, feeling my formations sent out like waves from my being through the existing strife of a connection we currently had. At the same time I couldn't help wondering just how the mechanics of this mental connection worked and how far it all stretched. Perhaps there could be a way of testing such details.

_"Go away."_ Came his laboriously emphasized response nearly instantaneously. Clearly he'd been listening to me.

I sighed nonetheless, _'If your plan is to ignore this development by avoiding me then I'm afraid you're going to have a hard time in such a relatively small institution.'_

_"There is no development."_

_'Don't be so dull, Mello.'_

_"Go away!"_ I could hear something underlying his thoughts. There was something heavy on his mind, and my sudden appearance hadn't allowed him enough time to shove it all back into a dark corner. Quite interesting…

Despite the mysteries hidden in Mello's shadows, I couldn't help rolling my eyes as they opened once more upon the vacant hallway. Mello was two years older than me and yet he consistently opted to handle everything in his life so childishly.

I marched over to his closed door and knocked twice upon the wood. Through the silence I felt the dice being cast upon some larger table. At this point that's all this was, nothing more than a gamble as to just how far the connection between Mello and I went. If Mello were to be pushed over his edge, would any physical response he had be felt by him as well? Would that risk be enough to hold him back? Probably not.

The door was almost immediately flung open and I was met by his heated stare and looming form in the doorway.

"We need to talk." I said firmly.

His gaze narrowed on me, "No, we don't, Near."

"Yes, we do." I retorted with no sign of backing down. He should know better than to think I wouldn't get what I wanted somehow. _'Don't be a child.'_

I felt the burn of his boiling rage just beneath his outer shell and for the briefest of seconds I couldn't help finding myself considering whether or not he ever felt anything besides anger and worry, because at the moment it didn't seem like it. How disappointing it would be to discover that beneath everything I'd previously found so peculiar, Mello was just as boring as every other human being.

His grip on me and yank into the room ripped me back from my thoughts. He threw the door closed again and slammed me painfully against the wall. I didn't even have the time to try to discern whether he had felt the same feeling or not. "There is _nothing_ to talk about with this! There is _no_ development between us! Why the hell are you so insistent?!"

"That's not quite what I came here to discuss. However, _your_ insistence on the subject begs to question your own desire to work through such a conundrum."

His jaw locked together, his stare burning straight through me. "What do you want?" His voice came out quiet, nearly threatening.

"I mainly came to find out why exactly you brought me to the clinic yesterday." As I brought my concerns to light I observed the way the anger imbued in Mello's blue orbs was exchanged for pure skepticism.

"What?"

Through the silence that was thick with the energy between us there passed the hushed words of my thoughts, _'You heard me.'_ I clenched my teeth to stop the words there. This was meant only to be a simple conversation, not a confrontation. _'Don't goad him anymore than you already have in the past.'_ I reprimanded.

Mello's tight grip over my clothes fell away as he took a step back. His eyes transformed from pure skepticism of me to a gentler shade of inquisitiveness, and through the noise of our channel I could hear the racing waters of his mind, throwing questions and concerns my way without realizing how much of himself he was giving away. Through the discord I found the one most important question above the rest, _"Why?"_

"Curiosity." I answered, reaching for a lock of hair. "It's not in your design to treat me with anything but contempt and I don't quite see how that instance counted as anything different."

_"In my design…"_ He repeated to himself, _"As if you even know me."_

"I've known you for a long time, Mello. As I've told you before, it's my job to know all of these things." The inquisitiveness began to fade away from his look; I bit the inside of my cheek. _'This is not a confrontation.'_ I reminded myself. _'Mello's volatility with himself is what's seeping out right now, not a need for confrontation or competition.'_

I allowed my eyes to slip shut momentarily in an attempt to force my rational reading of Mello's attitude to override this instantaneous response I kept having around him. It kept getting us into situations I'd rather not be in, and right now that was not going to be to my advantage. I bit my cheek till I could taste copper. _'This is certainly no way for 'partners' to be acting with one another.'_

"That's your problem." Mello's words brought my eyes open again, finding him with an entirely curious expression spread across his every feature. His arms were now folded across his chest as if it was his last measure of defense. "You always look for answers and reasons to things when they aren't even there."

"Point?"

"There's no sort of story book explanation for what you're looking for. You blacked out from the 'exhaustion'. Obviously I knew what you'd done, but if anyone just found you on the ground who do you think they'd go looking for first? Me. Taking you to the clinic clears me of suspicion and assured that you'd stay in one place long enough for me to make sure you stay quiet about everything."

_'That's not the only thing he could have done, though._' I countered to myself, but my expression shifted to suspicion as the lock of hair curled between my fingers fell away. "You still doubt whether I'll keep this knowledge between the two of us." I concluded.

"It'd be stupid not to."

"No, Mello, it'd be stupid for you _to_ worry about such a thing."

He shook his head in a sort of amused sense of frustration, the act tossing his framed blonde locks to either side as his eyes rolled, "I told you yesterday, you have absolutely no idea what you've started here."

My look only further narrowed on him, "Then why don't you enlighten me, as you're clearly more versed in these matters than I."

"You want to hear me say it? Fine." His stare that burned back into me turned positively dangerous. _"This connection you forced us into makes sure that you to hold all the cards from now on."_ He stated through our mental channel.

The world was beginning to sound like a broken record. _'I understand that you're trying to work through this, Mello, but it's a bit if an overstatement to claim that I alone forced us into this bond. While I take much of the blame, it is partially your fault as well.'_

He took a step closer to me again, "My fault?" He asked carefully. "You think this is my fault?"

"Partially, yes, I do. If you could better control yourself we wouldn't have had this predicament occur in the first place."

His form grew tense, his fists clenching together. I didn't want to goad him through my comment. I meant only to correct his overstatement, not push his disordered self to the edge of his control. Even granted a mental channel I would never understand how the blonde had such a low level of resolve when it came to me. "Shut up!" He forced out, his icy eyes staring daggers through my being, "All you have ever done is put me down, Near. You demean me, you do everything in your power to keep me down, nothing is ever just your fault! But you come to _my_ room and try to say that you _know_ me? That you want to act as 'partners'?"

I shrugged, holding my own resolve together even as I watched his breaking in front of me and felt it tear at me from the inside as if it was my own sense of self being stripped away. Why did he have to do this? Why did he have to act so childish? "That is the definition of competition, Mello."

With my words he stepped closer to me till we practically shared the same air, our eyes sharing all the fire burning within us as the atmosphere sparked with energy between us that I couldn't place. But I _wanted_ to know what it was that this close proximity was generating. Something in the back of my mind told me to touch him; that if I did that I'd have my answers. But did I have enough chips to make that gamble?

His warm breath on my face made me focus on his words. "If you wanted to you could walk out this damn door and tell Roger everything. God knows they would never deal with us being bonded, that's too much risk to the fairness of competition. So do you know who they'd make leave? Me! Why would you want to have that much fucking control, Near?"

I swallowed down the pain I felt radiating from him, the sense of hopelessness that'd been planted in his heart. "L wouldn't do that."

"You don't know that."

"Neither do you."

"Do you think I'm willing to risk it? It's not your head on the line! In one move you've practically ruined any chance I have!"

I exhaled, "You're over-reacting. That's not how L would want things done. If anything-."

"You don't know L, Near." There was something hidden behind Mello's stare and his deeply-set words. I wanted to question him and figure out just where this was coming from, but even following the many lines of connection up to his thoughts led me only to the familiar static of his worries.

At once my own mind was consumed by the hiss of all his thoughts, his concerns. As clear as if they were my own I could see all the skewed probabilities Mello had formed regarding the likelihood of being discovered, and what Roger, Wammy and L would do in such a situation. His sense of anxiety was palpable, but how could I transfer over my own sense of sureness about the situation to him as he had done the previous night with his sense of confidence?

"It doesn't matter." Mello's voice stated evenly. "None of it matters. Just because I've been betrayed doesn't mean I have to go along with it. I can decide it all for myself."

_'Betrayal?'_ I wondered.

"The bond doesn't change anything between you and I."

"I never said I wanted it to." I stated, "However, I am interested in understanding how it functions between us."

"Well I'm not." Mello retorted as he began to back off me once more. "I'm done talking about this."

The time itself decelerated till one second became all there was, but just one second was all I needed to evaluate the situation. As it stood now, if I let Mello take hold over the situation I'd crafted us into then without a doubt he would create as much space between us as he possibly could. My understanding of the bonds the soul marks create would be forced three steps backwards. That outcome was just unacceptable. For any great detective, the greater good of the investigation should always outweigh the wants of the minor parties.

I didn't need any more justification than that. My hand reached out to the choked air between us, taking hold of Mello's own. It was warm, contrary to my chilled fingers, and strangely seemed to fit rather well with my own.

Time stopped. Mello froze and I burned under the eyes of a God shaking His dice.

Electricity shot through my entire body with just one beat of our hearts that I could almost feel chiming in perfect rhythm. This was not the sort of shock which had overtaken Mello and I the first time I'd thrown us into this situation. This was new, this was strange. This was… warm. Comforting.

Through only the connection of our hands at once it was as though everything else had been washed away from my mind, replaced entirely by a soothing sense of tranquility I had never known before. Harbored somewhere within the discord of our aura and brought forth through just the simple contact of flesh I at once saw the potential for utter peace of mind. The potential for a sense of belonging. The potential for-

"Stop!"

Mello's hand was ripped away from me and suddenly I was on my own again. Our minds were connected, but everything I'd just experienced through the simple action had been taken away as quickly as I had created it. What a sense of power that had been...

Mello's blue eyes turned to me; I heard the unintelligible screaming in his head. "Why?" There was a sense of agony in his voice that I'd never heard before. But as I watched him breathing deeply, his chest dramatically expanding out then contracting inwards, I wasn't sure I felt right apologizing for what I'd done.

"I told you I wanted to know."

His look hardened on me and in that second he didn't need to say it, or even think it for me to know exactly what he was thinking: I told you I didn't want to know! His teeth ground together, "You don't care about anyone but yourself!" He practically shouted.

In one swift movement he grabbed me by the material of my shirt, careful not to touch me, I noticed, and then heaved open the door and threw me out once more. I turned back to meet his deathly cold stare, "I'm done, Near! Just leave me alone." He said the final part with a firmness that sealed his decision before slamming the door shut once more.

My stare remained fixated upon the wood grains, unfazed by his demeanor, _'Quite interesting…'_ I considered to myself.

"Damn, I'm glad I didn't walk into that."

I looked to the side, finding Matt positioned a few feet away from the same bedroom door I'd just been thrown out of. A small smile crossed his face as we made eye contact, as if to sympathize that he understood the blonde's temper. If only it were that simple.

"Yes," I muttered, "That would not have been good." From the other side of the door I felt the cloud of turmoil and confliction, but at the same time at this point I had to consider my own inner contemplation. Disregarding the events that happened last, Mello had said many interesting things. But the thing that stuck out the most was his use of the word 'betrayal', saying he didn't have to go along with this betrayal.

Did he see this cruel joke as some form of betrayal? Why?

"What were you talking about in there, anyway?" Matt probed curiously.

"I can't quite say." I said listlessly, my thoughts still caught within the many folds of that word, "You'd be better off asking your stubborn roommate."

The redhead nodded, "I guess someone has to calm him down, anyway." He said as he readjusted the goggles atop his head as though preparing for battle. As he moved to enter the room I slipped past him without another word. After all, who's to say what exactly Mello needed right now to help him process everything that'd happened?

The click of the door closing again stopped me at the end of the hall in pure curiosity alone. I turned just slightly to listen to the silence of the air left between us that was charged with such deeply ingrained secrets neither of us had the words for.

_'Perhaps Matt is exactly what Mello needs right now._' I considered. _'Perhaps he needs that brick wall to throw things at that will just bounce back, instead of engaging another person who would actually challenge him.' _With a huff of satisfaction I turned to continue on my way.

_Thump_

Before I could take even a single step away from the hall I was stopped in place by the odd sensation of my heart beginning to race in my chest. I turned back to where I had just been at; it didn't take much to deduce that the rush of beats was not my own doing.

_'What are you doing?'_ I thought out spitefully.

_"Leave me alone!" _Mello's voice shot through my thoughts,_ "This doesn't involve you!"_ There was an ounce of guilt threaded throughout the fine capillaries of my heart.

_'Curious…'_ I thought to myself, finally taking a few steps further away from the damned room till I felt myself on the edge of our connective line. _'Very curious indeed…'_ My heart continued to race within my chest, pumping out streams of guilt. This was Mello's heart I was feeling, but I had no way to either place what was causing this, or investigate in to find out. There was nothing I could do now, but I detested the feeling of uselessness.

_"I can't tell him."_ I heard the words slip through my mind, quiet and enigmatic. _"I won't do it. This isn't what's supposed to happen! I can't do this."_ I listened carefully to Mello's inner turmoil filter in.

Something about our bond was shaking him on a level much deeper than it was for me; all of this went much deeper than mere concern about Roger finding out. What exactly did Mello know about soul mates that I didn't? Or could it be that Mello had somehow bought into the child's story of 'fate' and 'God's plan', and had ultimately taken it all as actual gospel?

How naïve of him… And yet somehow I expected nothing less of him.

If the latter was indeed the case, if Mello was so deeply bothered by whom God had placed him with, then he was being pathetically selfish. _'At least it's mutual,_' I thought to myself, _'I don't want to be bonded to someone who can't see past their own wants for the greater good. I don't want to be branded with the name of someone so self-centered.' _I couldn't help humoring the thought that perhaps I had been wrong about Mello's character all this time. Mello wasn't the interesting, dynamic individual I'd taken him to be before we had this connection. At least at that time he had been worthy competition.

_'Perhaps he does deserve Matt as his soul mate instead of me.' _I contemplated, _'Perhaps the quality that I had previously called altruism had in fact been the misread selfishness of a child angry that everything within his world hadn't gone the way he planned it to. Such childish ignorance… such foolishness deserves to be right where he is.' _

I turned to begin leaving down the stairs again. _'Feelings are pointless to the investigation. That's exactly what this has to become. If that's how he's going to act, then that's all Mello can be, just part of the investigation. A means to an end. As usual.' _

Mello's selfishness didn't warrant him the right to be reasoned with any further, or to even to be worked with. If he was going to behave like a mindless child then he deserved to be _used_ like a mindless pawn. As I took each wooden step further down the stairs I began reviving my original plan. If Mello didn't want to work together as partners than that was fine by me. Instead he could become the subject of the many tests I had formulated to put this mental bond through.

In the back of my head I felt the pressing weight of the new information that existed there, demanding that I contemplate this decision based on everything that'd passed between us when I'd grabbed his hand, everything I'd felt, and everything he had felt. Was it ethical to do such a thing, knowing the feelings that had just been generated?

I shook the question off. Ethics only mattered so far in the greater scheme of things anyway. _'Feelings are always pointless to an investigation.'_ I reminded myself.

* * *

A/N: I apologize for the longer wait for this chapter! I'm spending the next five weeks in China so I've had to juggle a lot to get this chapter out this fast. But regardless, I started this chapter thinking it was shoddy as hell and very disjointed, and I'm coming out of it thinking that I've smoothed a lot of it out, and that it's setting a pretty good point to launch some eventful scenes in the next chapter or two. Anyway, please let me know what you think of this chapter! I always love to hear everything everyone has to say and it continues to inspire me! Also thank you to everyone so far who has given their support!

Please review  
_-Forbiddensoul562_


	6. Could You See A Reaction?

Disclaimer: Please see Chapter 1 for full disclaimer.

* * *

Chapter 6: Could You See A Reaction?

A sound investigation must be based upon a foundation that is nothing short of complete practicality and impartiality. Unfortunately, considering the situation that 'fate' had generated I could only embody one of those qualities. For when all of your mental processes become tied with another human being's it suddenly becomes quite difficult to attain true impartiality.

Though, perhaps this particular investigation didn't necessarily call for the same level of impartiality. For humans are, by nature, impractical creatures, thus making it nearly impossible to observe their behaviors purely from the outside. In the very least from this case in particular it appeared that there was exponentially more to be gained by engaging the investigation on a personal level.

For the first time an investigation required that I put myself into the midst of its study. With Mello unwilling to assist in learning what exactly it meant to be bonded with one another, I was left with no other option than to conduct the experiments on myself while at the same time observing whether or not Mello experienced anything from it, and if so to what degree.

While Mello may be correct in assuming that I lack an adequate understanding of social conventions, I am not so blind as to not be able to see that I over-stepped a delicate line when I took Mello's hand. That singular act had opened a door to emotions Mello was clearly nowhere near capable of handling at the moment, and that I was not ready to begin scrutinizing over.

A part of me regretted pushing him over that invisible line. But for the sake of being able to live together, it needed to be done.

I allowed a week to go by between us in relative silence. He didn't address me in public or through the link and I did my best to do the same for him. In just the short time reality seemed to drift back into its routine of dull meandering redundancy and I was left to stew on my questions and hypotheses.

But a week was all I could take just sitting and waiting in a relative sense of fabricated peace. It allowed Mello a sense that he was getting what he wanted, going about his business every day with Matt trailing ever closer to his side, with only those brief windows of opportunity to see what he was thinking.

This somber reticence was smothering and after a week I could be patient no longer.

The first factor that needed to be determined was the relative size of our ability to communicate with one another. But this too harbored many subsets of questions within itself, such as whether or not communication was the only thing limited in range, and what qualities affected the distance at which we were able to feel and hear one another.

For now, though, I knew exactly how to measure this quality.

I stared at the ticking clock hanging upon the wall from my desk in the front of the classroom. The teacher continued to prattle on about the importance of understanding the psychology behind city landscape designs and geography without a clue of how close the minute hand ticked to the end of class.

My eyes fell from the looming clock face to look over at the other side of the room. Class time was one of the sparing moments that Mello was forced to encroach upon the bubble of our merging thoughts. He body was bent over the top of his desk, scribbling furiously away at his notes as the strands of his blonde hair brushed across the smooth wooden surface.

_'As if the notes will help much,' _I observed to myself,_ 'He always seems to write so much, and yet it's his fury to get it all written down which causes him to miss the most important parts of the lecture itself.'_

_"Shut up, Near"_ I watched his eyes narrow on his paper, his pen continuing to scribble away.

_'Quite the well composed response.'_ How far were we from one another now? Maybe about five feet, give or take. My look darted back to the clock, following the seconds hand around it's circular path as it counted down to noon, the time of freedom; the time when the first experiment could begin.

Ring!

The teacher's words stopped as she turned to the clock, surprised by its sudden chiming while the other students of the class began to pack up their things and leave the room. The commotion rang through each person as if the ringing released a mutual sigh through everyone the moment the bell finally signaled their release.

I closed my own book that'd been absentmindedly laid on my desk, all the while keeping my peripheral gaze locked upon the blonde who collected his things and stood to leave as fast as seemingly possible. I could feel his sense of urgency deep in my bones. The quicker he could get away from this room the quicker he could be free of me. How immature. Since when did Mello _not_ just confront his problems? I couldn't quite fathom the rationale behind this new mentality he'd adopted, but I greatly preferred the way he used to be to whatever _this _was.

As Matt joined him at his side the pair moved to exit through the door. I followed quickly after them, opting to use the hallway the classroom was positioned on as the gauge for me sense of range. The fact that I'd already roughly measured the space out to around thirty feet or so would work in my benefit.

I stopped just outside the classroom door, _'How far can you hear me?'_ I thought out, watching Mello move through the other kids with the redhead, his form unwinding more and more with each step he took.

His actions never faltered once, _"I told you I don't want to do this."_

_'Why?'_ He was at about seven feet now. _'If you know the distance that our thoughts travel then you will know the amount of space you need to maintain to keep our thoughts from converging. That is your plan, isn't it?'_

_"My plan is to not let you provoke me."_ I could hear level of stress developing in his tone of voice as he found it increasingly more difficult to juggle listening to Matt talk while communicating with me at the same time.

_'I see. Well, that certainly has quite the track record so far.'_ I pushed him, counting his steps as the people walking between us made keeping a close visual over his movements more difficult. I estimated about nine feet at this point, however.

_"Just leave me alone!"_ Ten feet.

_'You need more practice.'_ Eleven feet. My brow knitted together as I felt the connection beginning to slip. It was certainly still present, but each movement made it slip further to the recesses of my mind. Interesting…

_"Fuck you."_ Twelve feet.

_'Is Matt the partner that you wanted?'_

Mello's entire movement stopped. Thirteen feet. _"What?" _As if in perfect coordination the other students filtered out of the hallway until all that remained were the three of us. Mello turned back to the class where I lingered just outside the door; his sharp blue eyes gleamed in the light of our shared threatening atmosphere.

I took a step away from him, utterly disregarding Matt's eyes that trailed between the two of us in confusion. I grabbed a strand of hair, _'You're beginning to make a scene.'_ I thought to him, taking another step in the opposite direction of him, further feeling the connection progressively weaken, _'You definitely need more practice.'_

_"Fuck you."_ The terse words slid through my mind, but were the last that I could hear from him. I could effortlessly feel Mello's presence on the other side of the hall, but stepping outside the invisible limits made it significantly weaker, and I could feel the annoyance he'd had with me being filtered back out of my system.

Just one week ago I had been able to feel and hear Mello's thoughts from a distance slightly larger than this. Mimi and Red had said that their connection only traveled about ten to twelve feet depending on the strength of their bond with one another. Therefore something was causing the limit to shrink. But what was it? Mello's refusal to accept the bond? Or perhaps his unwavering level of abhorrence for me?

If that was indeed the case then why had or initial mental bond been larger than it was now? Could a bond grow or shrink depending solely on one's level of hatred? Theoretically it seemed possible, but whether or not it was worth pursuing was the question.

I chanced a glance over my shoulder back to the two, watching as they headed off in their own direction again. _'No,_' I thought, _'It wouldn't be beneficial to drive Mello to detest me more than he already does. Regardless of the potential observational advantages, I still have to live with him. However, that doesn't mean I can't continue measuring the affects of various stimuli on him, and if it so happens that the byproduct is a deeper sense of hatred, well then I will be sure to measure the changes accordingly.'_

The thought reminded me again that Mello had left me in a relatively desperate situation in which I had no other choice but to involve myself in the investigation. I wasn't keen on the idea of using myself, or of having very little way to actually measure any changes. But what sort of detective would I be if I wasn't able to conduct an adequate investigation with the meager resources I had at my disposal?

The first test to be conducted was logging any noticeable reaction to pleasurable stimuli.

The common room of Wammy's was thankfully being uninhabited by people by the time I arrived. Taking a seat in the center of the floor I pulled over one of the blank puzzles I'd neatly abandoned on a different day. _'Working on puzzles allows me to better process the interworking of a mystery. It is entertainment, but it simultaneously arouses a sense of power and confidence inside of me. In theory, those same feelings may be translated over the bond to Mello, despite being at such a distance from one another.'_

My world went dark as my eyes closed, taking careful note of my current state. _'Breathing: normal. Heart rate: normal. Mood: relatively relaxed and calm.'_ A moment of silence passed through my thoughts; each second ticked by like a lifetime. _'Mello's not around.'_ I observed,_ 'I can feel him, though.'_ Like the resounding echo of my own heart beat in my ears, like the deafening ring that persisted in the background of one's own silence I could feel his presence, though it was merely an inkling of a sensation on the tresses of my own mental grasp. _'That will have to be good enough for now. Let's begin.'_

My eyes snapped open, at once my world consisted of only the puzzle on the ground and the divine mystery that had been clouding my every thought. My hands sought out the board, turning it over to scatter the pieces and begin the game.

_'What's the point of God placing someone like me with someone like Mello?'_ I wondered, mindlessly picking at the white corner pieces to place them back in their designated place. _'If I'm to humor Him merely for the sake of arguing that somehow Mello possesses fundamental qualities that I lack, even then, two beings consisting of one greater whole hardly seems like a rational premise to go off of.'_ I contemplated. _'It implies that somehow each person is inherently flawed and thus can only truly live to their fullest potential when completed by the bearer of their soul mark. What sort of design is that?'_

My look narrowed upon the individual parts splayed out in front of me, each was no longer entirely blank, but instead now contained individual fragments of the entire mystery printed upon their surfaces. _'Perhaps the pairing goes back to my original belief that God just needed a name to place upon each of us and had no other reason beyond that.'_

I grabbed a piece, but momentarily hesitated to put it in with the others, _'That can't be entirely true. What could Mello possibly have done to deserve to be forsaken by the very hand of God? As far as partnerships are concerned Mello's not a hopeless case. He could have easily been placed with Matt and life would have turned out perhaps only marginally different,'_

My hand remained hovered above the nearly completed board. _'At the same time, there could be some truth to the idea Roger has been purporting for years. Perhaps God designed Mello and me to be bonded because we would make a great team if we were to work together as L. What would God have to gain out of such a move?'_ I put the final piece in its slot.

I looked over the completed puzzle in front of me, seeing not the conclusion I'd been searching for, but instead only each part to the mystery perfectly situated back together without resolution. _'Though what would any God have to gain out of anything? Why create soul marks, or the mental bond? Why go to the trouble of creating humans to begin with? Why would any omnipotent being design such an oblivious and fickle species?' _

I turned the puzzle over, _'Perhaps it's time for another flood…'_

I sighed, _'No, even I am not that vindictive.'_

As my eyes looked over the pieces in front of me I felt my conscious rising up out of the mental investigation to note the world around me. I held myself back from beginning the routine again by making a note of my current state, _'Breathing: normal. Heart rate: slightly elevated. Mood: conflicted.'_ Again my eyes closed as I sought out any subtle changes that my own mental escape may have had on my supposed partner.

All I could feel was the beating of my own heart, my own deep breathing and tumultuous emotions. There wasn't even the slightest of changes in what hints I could feel of him. _'Mello's state: inconclusive.' _I concluded.

_'Perhaps pleasurable experiences are too diluted to feel.'_ I justified to myself as I worked to quickly clean up the scattered mess of white pieces I'd recreated. _'It could be entirely possible that Mello did indeed feel something from it, just as I did, but it may have manifested differently in him. I need to conduct an experiment that will give me a much more definitive reaction.'_

Abandoning the newly completed puzzle on the floor once more I stood to exit the room, a lingering sense of repetition shadowing me. From the common room I made my way to one of the rarely used storage closets situated by the kitchen, where orphanage's emergency supplies were stored in case the worst was to occur.

Slipping silently inside I closed the door behind me, fumbling around the shelves with only the permeating light from the outside to light my way. My fingers grazed with hesitance over each individual box, searching for the specific texture that I knew so well. After only a few moments my fingers located the rough cardboard box and the smooth wax columns that sat beside it.

One strike of the match and the room was lit by the single flame, fueled entirely by the wax candle grasped tightly in my left hand. I watched as the orange light from the fire licked at the air, absorbing both the oxygen and my nerves.

_'Breathing: shallow. Heart beat: normal. Mood: apprehensive at best.'_ For the hundredth time that day I reminded myself how much I loathed having to put myself into the fray of my own investigation. But what else could I really do in this situation?

My gaze narrowed upon the flame in my hand, swallowing down all the irksome human worries brewing in my center as my free hand rose up closer, feeling the heat of the fire upon my skin. My fingers danced quickly across the flame, flirting with the potential danger as the smoke from the wick began to paint my skin. I felt my heart rate steadily increase the longer I watched my own actions.

_'This isn't enough.'_ I stated, unable to register any significant change in the subtle sense I could feel of Mello. I couldn't help humoring the thought that perhaps at this distance we couldn't feel physical pain from each other. But logically speaking that didn't make sense. Evolutionarily speaking soul mates should, in the very least, be able to feel the physical pain of the other in order to signal the presence of danger.

However, that implied that evolution, or _God,_ had been planning things logically. The fact that I'd been placed me with Mello in the first place insinuated that that wasn't necessarily true.

My stare hardened upon the gently dancing flame and before I could allow myself to think on it any further my hand's flirting motion came to a stop directly over the fire. A singular moment was just long enough for the seemingly benign flame to burn my flesh.

I hissed in pain, retracting back. My hand ached painfully in the scorch spot I'd inflicted upon myself in the name of an investigation. But it was the immediate sense of slight rhythmic reverberations thumping at my mind which kept my body motionless.

The rhythms echoed on the very outskirts of my mind; something deep in my heart ached as its own form of warning signal, though it was a sign I didn't recognize as one of my own. In that moment it felt like the air of suspense when being chased, when in that singular moment you feel somehow aware of your pursuer's aura without any conscious reasoning as to how or why.

_'He felt it!'_ That much I knew for sure. _'I know he felt something, at least. It's impossible to know how much, though.'_

I blew out the candle I'd been briefly using, placing it back on the shelf where I had retrieved both it and the match from, then exiting from the closet just as silently as I'd entered; all the while ignoring the stinging sensation emanating from the palm of my right hand.

_'If Mello can feel my physical pain when we're out of range of one another, especially something so minuscule as the burn of a candle, what would he feel if it were something more series and within the area of our communicative bond?'_ My reflection of the situation generated one more experiment that I knew I could execute. However, for that one to work, I would need to be patient and wait for just the right time.

-:-

The execution of my final test only required that I wait until later that very night, when the entire building had been shut down and the inhabitants had drifted off into their evening slumbers. At such a time I quietly slipped out from my bedroom to the unlit hallway of the orphanage, following the passageway down to the floor's community bathroom, which happened to be conveniently located only a few feet from Mello and Matt's shared room.

As I passed by their door, a sudden flood of emotions slipped into my systems, bringing my trek to a halt. At once my mind was ushered into a sense of ease; the feeling of tranquility ran through my veins like a cool saline drip.

Each labored breath that passed through my lungs became progressively deeper, and it felt as though in that single moment all the freedom I could ever want existed just past my fingertips. But at the same time nothing in me was struggling to grasp it. I felt almost as though I was experiencing these feelings as one would in an out of body experience; merely looking in at who was truly relishing in the world that was so disconnected from the nightmares imbued within these walls.

_'Mello's dreaming.'_ I concluded. _'So I can feel what he feels in his dreams, then? Interesting… I wonder if it would be possible to influence his dreams one way or another.' _Probably so, but that was the likes of an experiment that'd have to wait for a different night.

If what I had just felt was any indication of a trend, then Mello's dreams seemed to be the single moment when he achieved any read sense of reprieve from the chaos that was this competition. The thought made me briefly reconsider what I was about to do.

With a huff I pushed the reconsideration to the side and continued on my way. Perhaps if he hadn't been so selfish as to shut me down so quickly I wouldn't be forced to go about it in this way. As per usual Mello had no one to blame but himself.

The sound of rushing water broke the perpetuating silence that consumed both the institution and the bathroom I'd locked myself within. The glare of harsh fluorescent lighting shone down upon my pale figure in such a way that instantaneously transported me back to where I had been only one week ago. How quickly the hands of fate had taken its players into its clutches and spun the very game beneath them.

My attentive stare followed along the minute curvatures of my body; re-memorizing the lines as I had done so many times before. My stomach churned in the same fashion it had done almost my entire life as my eyes fell upon the words imprinted upon my vest. This time, however, the sickening feeling in the pit of my belly was for an entirely different reason.

Mihael Keehl. Mello's real name. A partnership supposedly written by the very hand of God, yet signed in the ghastly, ivory ink of a malevolent devil. It felt as though no matter what I did now he was there, etched into the actions and thoughts flowing through me in ways I couldn't even begin to comprehend fully. I'd never felt as shadowed as I did throughout the last week.

This wasn't what was meant to be. I was designed, bred, and raised to exist alone, serving my purpose through exclusively my own means; not through the likes of being tied to another individual. _'I'm not meant to fit into the likes of society's standards. Why should this be any different?'_ I thought spitefully, turning away from the mirror and back instead to the slowly filling tub.

After I finished undressing myself I went to the tub and lowered myself down into the hot water, turning the dial off to once again throw the room back into its usual quiet state; now broken only by the drips of water falling from the tap.

My current location put me within the range of distance to Mello for a line of communication and emotion to be exchanged with relative ease. In his sleeping state, the only things I could feel from him now were subtle and subdued emotions. Like fingertips skimming across the pristine surface of the water I felt how perfectly calm he was, and as my body lowered further down into the water I reminded myself that I was about to break that momentary sense of alleviation.

He had brought all of this upon himself, but it was I who made the decision to carry it out.

The water overtook my head as I inhaled a deep breath and held myself beneath the surface, letting it transport me to an entirely new realm of seclusion.

My heart drummed in my ears, unknowingly being denied its most fundamental element; my mind raced with thoughts of what would happen next. My fingers grasped tightly at the porcelain sides of the tub to keep myself beneath the clear surface, waiting and itching in anticipation for whatever was to follow.

Like a heavy pressure lowered upon my chest I gradually felt my lungs begin to gasp at what remained of its air supply; the rhythmic thump of my heart in my ears began to steadily increase in protest.

_"What are you doing?"_ Mello's voice shot through my head; my entire being remained perfectly still in place, refusing to offer him any semblance of an answer. He needed to come to me for this to show me anything at all.

_"Near!"_ Silence met him, but there was an interesting tone in the way he said my name, and through my extremities I too was beginning to feel it. What was it exactly? _"Dammit Near what are you doing?!"_ My lungs were burning but I held myself firmly in place, my eyes scrunching closed as if it would help my lungs to squeeze out whatever remained of my body's stored amount of oxygen.

_"I can't breathe, Near, stop!"_

My grip released. My lungs gulped in air as an invisible force heaved my body up from beneath the water. As my lungs worked to assure they had enough air and my heart raced to pump the fresh supply to my body, my mind went to work beginning to process what had just happened.

It hadn't been my own need for oxygen that had broken my resolve and pulled me from beneath the surface. It had been something different altogether. Something entirely separate from myself. Something _altruistic._ As if hearing and feeling Mello's sense of panicked anxiety and fear of suffocation had been enough to tug at some dusted over string of humanity in me just enough to force me back above the water.

In that one moment I was breathing only so that Mello may be able to.

_"What the fuck was that?"_

I pulled my leg up close to me, spinning a wet lock of hair as I ignored the fury resonating off his words. _'I wanted to see a reaction.'_ I stated simply without giving it much of a thought.

_"To what, you drowning yourself?"_

_'So you know what I did.'_ My eyes darted to the side wall where the general direction of Mello's room was. _'That's very interesting indeed.'_

_"How many times do I have to tell you to leave me out of your damn experiments? I'm not getting involved with any of this!" _He shot back at me.

With an exhale I stood up from the water I'd only just drawn. I needed time to think these developments over without having to be bothered by Mello's persistent nagging. _'While I can sympathize with your feeling that this is quite the unfortunate development we've gotten ourselves into, just because you want to remain willfully ignorant to it doesn't mean I have to do the same.'_ I thought back to him.

I sighed as Mello's all too familiar feeling of annoyance consumed me, _"You don't understand human beings at all."_

_'Perhaps. But at least I don't lie to myself.'_ Mello's only response back to me was silence.

-:-

The rest of the night between Mello and I remained in relative silence. His disgruntled feelings of annoyance and an odd sense of fear kept me lying awake in bed the rest of the night. Even into the following day, as I sat bored in class, my mind was a restless sea of thoughts and probabilities concerning all that had happened.

Mello had felt enough from me to deduce what my actions were, and while I didn't necessarily doubt his deductive abilities, it was interesting to note nonetheless. How exactly _had_ he known? How much of it had he felt? How much of my experience had he felt when I burned my hand earlier in the day?

At the same time I had to consider my own side of the spectrum in terms of my own unconscious reactions I'd had to knowing and feeling that he was in trouble.

More importantly, though, I couldn't help now wondering if indeed there had been some truth to my previously held hypothesis. When I blacked out, had Mello's action in taking me to infirmary been partly due to of some intrinsic altruistic reaction?

At this point it was nearly impossible to tell one way or the other, but as my eyes crept up from my desk to the front of the classroom to where Mello was standing working through a math problem I couldn't help my own intrinsic need to know. But just _knowing_ the answers would hardly prove interesting. I needed to keep questioning, and continue observing for myself.

I pushed my unsettled thoughts away, shifting my mental focus from the mechanics of our bond instead to the dull hum of words that'd been streaming through my conscious from the blonde.

The stagnant air in the classroom was thick with an awaiting sense of tension as the other students and I watched Mello scribble numbers across the blackboard. How fortunate the rest of the class was to not have to listen to Mello's mental prattling of trying to get through the problem. His work would greatly benefit if only he would just take a second to relax and look at what he was actually doing instead of worrying about finishing it.

With a sigh I finally had to look away from his work, out the side window instead. _'The calculations are off.'_ I thought to myself.

_"The calculations are not off."_ Mello's stiff voice echoed in my head, so sure of himself. Yet the scratching of chalk across the blackboard came to a sudden stop.

I couldn't fight the small smirk that grew across my face. _'You didn't multiply the product by everything on the outside. Therefore all of your subsequent calculations have been off.'_

_"This is my problem, not yours!"_

_'Of course it is. I don't make elementary mistakes like that.'_ Like the gates of a dam opening I felt his anger rush out, overtaking his system and flowing through my own grasp over my emotions like a stream of warm water cutting through ice.

The channel's static was momentarily quiet between us.

_"Dammit!"_

_'I told you.' _My smirk grew by a fraction of an inch. _'You know, if you worried less about how quickly you can finish the problem and instead focused on the quality of your work you wouldn't have these issues.'_ I advised.

The piece of chalk he'd been holding clattered back down into the tray attached to the board, "Shut up!" My eyes shot over to Mello. The dull hum of our intermingled thoughts completely fell away as he whipped around to face me. "Just shut up! Why don't you ever just shut the hell up?!" He shouted.

The already quiet classroom turned to deathly silence as a cold chill ran through my bones. _'Mello.'_

"No!" He took daring steps to close the distance between us. "Don't go there with me! I've had enough!" Off to the side I could hear the teacher's voice trying to bring the blonde back under control, but the indistinct words were lost to both of us as he charged forward.

I moved to get up from my desk in an attempt to generate more space, but he grabbed me before I had a chance to get anywhere. With one forceful movement Mello threw me to the ground painfully, the chairs clattering around me as the other students moved out of his destructive path.

"Why do you always do this? You never fucking listen to me! Why don't you just leave me alone? Just let me be!" He practically screamed as he towered over top of me. The level of deep-seated fury burning within his eyes was unlike anything I'd ever seen. Suddenly the person standing before me wasn't the dynamic blonde anomaly I'd known for the greater majority of my life. No longer did he even feel like the person God designed me to be partnered with.

In that one moment I felt true fear. What had I done?

_'Mello, don't do this!'_ What could I say now? What could I possibly do now to reverse all of this?

"No! You can't just keep doing this to me, Near! I keep telling you and you never fucking listen to me!"

_'Mello stop!'_ His eyes burned into mine with the fires of emotions neither of us knew how to deal with. But as I looked deep into those orbs, for the first time seeing all of his undecipherable secrets that had been hidden away for so long.

Matt came up behind him, taking hold of one of Mello's clenched arms in an attempt to pull him away, all the while uttering words that neither of us bothered to listen to. "No!" He pulled forcefully out of Matt's hold, throwing him too to the ground on the side, "You wanted to see a damn reaction out of me? Well here's your reaction! I'll give you exactly what you want to see! Stand up!" He screamed at me.

I could stare nowhere else but straight back into his eyes, my heart shot up into my throat and I could only hope that he could feel half of what I was feeling. _'You have to stop.'_ I told him, my voice dripping with the seriousness of the gravity of our situation. Everything in my world, the investigation, reading him and even the chaos he had already created fell away. Suddenly the only thing that mattered was bringing Mello back into his own mind again; back down to the real world.

_'Listen to me, Mello. Don't do this. Don't take your anger out on me right now. Look at where we are. We're in class. Everyone is here. If you want any chance of fixing this you are going to have to calm down.'_

His teeth grit together; his fists clenched tighter till I could feel the sting of his nails biting into his skin on my own palms, yet something told me my words were having an effect. "Dammit!"

_'No, Mello. Don't focus on them right now. None of them matter. Just listen to me.' _Our stare remained secured on one another, and through that connection alone I could feel that I was the only thing that existed in his universe in that single moment. _'Don't involve everyone here into something that I caused. You have to calm down.'_ I repeated; my voice becoming lower and gentler with him. _'Just calm down, Mello. Please.'_

The ticking of each passing second felt like its own lifetime, but finally I watched as all the built up anger fell away from his azure orbs; the vulnerability I'd seen in him becoming replaced entirely by the panicked realization of the unfolding scene he'd caused. His eyes broke from mine, darting around at all the eyes focused entirely on the two of us.

For the briefest of seconds I couldn't bring myself to care about any of them; something whispered that right now none of it even mattered. Whatever had just been witnessed through the eyes of the outside world, and whatever series of events we had suddenly triggered all seemed utterly meaningless in the larger scheme of what was unfolding.

For the past week Mello had completely turned himself away and wanted nothing to do with me. Likewise, I had treated him as nothing more than a meaningless pawn, submitting him to an arguably cruel investigation.

Yet when we were pit against the outside world and both of our warning signs screamed danger, Mello had looked to no one but _me_. He had trusted me alone to see that for a brief second he no longer had the ability to control himself. In the face of that level of trust, pausing to consider what would most advantageous had never even crossed my mind. For the first time I had felt _needed_, and at once I had wanted nothing more than to guide Mello back to himself.

Maybe somehow I was beginning to understand what it actually meant to be partners after all.

I exhaled the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. _'So, how exactly do you plan on talking your way out of this one?'_

* * *

A/N: Well, that was much longer than I originally thought it was going to be, though it was also much wordier than I would have liked. On the bright side, it's also being updated much sooner than I thought it would, too! As with the last chapter, I can't be certain when I'll get to update again considering my travels, but hopefully these quick updates will continue. Again, thanks to everyone who has been reviewing and favoriting this story! As I say, getting to read your reactions to these chapters that I put so many hours into always makes my day. So until the next update, please let me know what you thoughts are on all these new developments going on!

Please review  
_-Forbiddensoul562_


	7. Could You Ever Understand?

God's Dice

Disclaimer: For full disclaimer please see Chapter 1.

* * *

Chapter 7: Could You Ever Understand?

The volatility within the silent classroom hung thick in the air, allowing us only a limited amount of time before the shock began to wear off, back to its regulated speed of existence. Deep inside my bones I could feel the brewing of Mello's panic; his eyes shot around the room to the swarms of eyes watching us and watching _him_.

Clearly the shock of what he had allowed to transpire was inhibiting his ability to take back control of the room. However, I wasn't about to let his own deluding sense of chaos bring the both of us down.

_'Reactions. Observations. Honesty. Experiments!'_ My mind ran through our current options fast enough for me to process, but much too quickly to create coherent sentences from. I inhaled a deep breath, attempting to calm down the sense of urgency that Mello sent running through my veins. _'Roger's going to ask you what happened.'_

_"I know!"_

_'Tell him I've been running experiments and making observations on your behavior.'_

"Near, you're bleeding!" One of the girls standing by the side exclaimed, breaking my concentration away from the already fragile hold we still retained of the situation.

I looked down to examine myself, finding that indeed somehow in the midst of Mello's violent outbreak the right arm of my shirt had been torn and a line of blood ran freely down from a cut on my forearm. "Well, so I am." I said with indifference, observing the laceration briefly before my eyes darted back up, spotting Mello watching me again.

_'You can feign ignorance and tell Roger that you have no idea what the experiments were as there's no proof to say you actually know anything. I'll handle the rest.'_

_"I don't need you to fight my battles for me."_

_'Clearly.'_ From the side I heard the teacher calling for someone to get Roger. _'We don't have much time, Mello. If you want to make this believable then you'd better run now.'_

In a sliver of a passive moment, an unspoken sense of understanding crossed through our shared consciousness which agreed that we would handle this situation together later, when the sake of our secret being discovered wasn't on the line.

Mello took off at a run before anyone standing around us had a chance to stop him. The tumultuous blonde exited the room, leaving the space consumed in the aftermath of his strife.

Matt, ever the loyal dog, followed after him immediately. _'Typical_…' I thought with an ounce of contempt. As I watched him go I couldn't help pondering what _their_ conversation was going to be like. What would Matt try to say to him? Did he really think that he could in any way understand what was going through the blonde's mind? Even I, now linked to Mello's mind, still barely understood how the internal connective processes came to be.

That didn't matter now, though. What was important was making sure my own role within this staged act went off without fault. With a heavy exhale I pushed myself up from the floor, ignoring the new dull ache I felt from the laceration on my arm. "If you'll excuse me, I'll see myself to the infirmary now."

-:-

"Tell me again what you said happened between you two." Roger questioned from where he had parked himself on a chair beside the bed I sat on.

I watched disinterestedly as one of the nurses wrapped a white bandage around my arm. "There's not exactly much to tell." I responded as I kept my eyes on her work. "I admit that, for my own reasons, I have been observing Mello recently. It's hard to say what happened today, but I suppose something in Mello's incorrect work caused him to snap."

Roger nodded, merely giving a small 'hm' sound in response.

My gaze narrowed down on the nurse's work, _'He doesn't believe me.'_ I observed, _'Not that I can blame him. Mello didn't exactly grant me any favors with what we're working with. I shouldn't have to be the one to help him get out of this. He got himself into this; he should be the one to get himself out.' _And yet somehow I couldn't just sit back and let things unfold that way; I had to do something to resolve this mess. Perhaps it was only because I knew in the back of my mind that if anything was discovered Mello would never be able to see it as anyone's fault but mine.

"What sort of observations have you been conducting?" Roger pressed.

"They're nothing of any real significance."

"Near, if you feel your observations of Mello may have prompted these actions then it certainly has become significant." We both knew he was right, and stalling out my explanation was not helping to diffuse the situation any better.

"I've merely been attempting to observe the way Mello responds to different stimuli. In the beginning I requested his assistance in my endeavors, explaining that my goal is to achieve a better understanding of such qualities, allowing us to potentially better keep a level of peace between us. Naturally he declined wanting to participate, so it's reasonable to assume he's harbored a growing level of paranoia regarding my persistence in the observations." I shrugged at the end, more to pass off my subsequent sense of wonder which questioned whether any of my words necessarily qualified as a lie or not.

Roger nodded, "You pushed him despite him saying no, I see."

I nodded as well, hating the feeling of having to take so much of the blame for this. As the nurse cut off the last of the bandage and secured it to my arm I found myself considering whether or not I really needed to take so much of the blame for what had occurred.

"I pushed Mello, but I hardly see how that could create any case by which to excuse his eruption which not only created a scene but injured two people in the process." I pulled my arm back, looking over the neatly wrapped immaculate bandages that stood pronounced against my own light skin.

"We're not excusing his behavior, Near. There will be consequences for what Mello's done. However, I also can't overlook the fact that he'd at least partially been provoked as well." As he spoke Roger stood from his seat, straightening out his clothes. I kept my eyes averted from him, looking over my arm as I stretched out my fingers to test the way my muscles moved under the material; all the while I felt his eyes suspiciously upon me.

"What happened to your hand, Near?" He asked skeptically, motioning slightly to my extended hand where on my palm lay the slightly darkened spot of where my experiments with the candle had burned my skin remained present even a week later.

I threw a quick, indifferent look to Roger in an attempt to gauge what he was thinking, though anything I could have possibly found there was heavily hidden beneath the wrinkled folds of age upon his skin.

Looking down again I pulled the damaged sleeve of my shirt down over my arm and clenched my hand up tight, "I burned myself. It was nothing serious though."

As a moment of silence passed where Roger processed what I said a thick air descended down between us; though it was hard to read into. "I see," He answered, taking a step away from where we had been positioned. "With the way that things have been headed recently, it seems soon you could find yourself in over your head. Just be more careful from now on. You wouldn't want to push things to a level to which you can't come back from." With his vague words hanging in the air he offered me a small smile accompanied by a nod then passed out of the infirmary door.

My stare instantly narrowed on the frosted glass panes set into the wooden door, _'He knows something.'_ That much was obvious. _'What exactly does he think he knows? How would he know anything? What am I to do about all this now?'_

Immediately afterwards I halted the thought as my gaze travelled upward to the ceiling, searching through the thick fog of our diluted connection for any sign as to what Mello may be feeling or thinking right now. But there was nothing there to be found.

However, as I pulled myself back to my own mind I couldn't help wondering if the real issue here was that I was searching too hard for a clear-cut answer to Mello's emotions, when instead the answer lay within me. Even if that did sound horribly cliché.

Roger was certainly not my enemy; under normal circumstances I was rather indifferent towards him. But given the current circumstances we'd thrown ourselves into I at once felt pitted against him, as though he _was_ the current adversary; the opposing force positioned across the board from me.

My eyes travelled down from the ceiling instead to the palm of my right hand, opening my fingers to reveal the reddened area created by my own testing. Were these feelings of an inherent dichotomy between us and the rest of the outside world being filtered into me based off how Mello was handling the situation? It certainly seemed plausible.

My burned right hand clenched together in my lap again, _'The real questions here are rather: what is Roger going to do about Mello's outburst, and what are he and I going to do in response? At this point we both have stakes to lose if things do not play out in our favor.'_

My eyes fell to the blank space around me. _'All I can do now is wait and see what happens next.'_ I exhaled, _'Don't screw this up, Mello.'_

-:-

With or without the bond connecting Mello and myself together, the blonde has always been a horribly predictable human being; it was a quality which would surely be his undoing at some point if he didn't learn how to be control himself.

In this case however, I knew he would wait till night befell Wammy's to confront me again, well after any chance of being heard or reprimanded had gone to sleep for the evening. I couldn't help being thankful for that call on his part. If we were to get anywhere tonight there couldn't be any chance for distractions.

I felt Mello's presence approaching my room before I heard any thoughts cross through the growing mental link. However, what was being sent through to me was much quieter than how I knew him to be. Was this his wall of resolve holding everything back, or could it be something completely different?

From my spot in the middle of the floor in my room, surrounded by a growing wall of stacked dominos, I tracked the movement of what subtle wisps of confliction I could feel across the outside of my wall till he came to a stop outside my bedroom door. If I was feeling him now then there was no way he couldn't sense that I was here and awake. And yet there was no movement and no thoughts between us. There was merely a frightening silence slowly filling the void.

_'You can come in.'_ I offered warily.

Instantly the doorknob clicked as it was turned to open. How uncharacteristically polite of him to wait for me to invite him in. There was definitely something serious weighing on his mind, but as he entered through the doorway and those familiar crystalline blue orbs cut through the shadowed room to meet my own I knew I couldn't let myself probe through his thoughts for my answers. Though it was tempting. Already this was proving to be quite a curious exchange.

The door was shut again behind him, and at once my room suddenly felt utterly sealed off from the rest of the world. No sooner had his hand left the door handle that I asked the question looming in my head: "what happened?" My words were short and unintentionally curt with him as I refused to allow this conversation to deviate from the matters at hand.

Mello's jaw visibly locked tightly together, "Roger told me that I have to stay away from you until they say otherwise. Other than that and a few extra assignments being thrown on me, that's all they did."

"All things considered, that's rather lenient of them. However, I must say that it's amazing how quick you are to defy Roger's rules." I let slip, feeling myself playing with the latent tension hanging in the room.

"What did you say to him?" Mello asked, taking his turn to keep our conversation strictly on point. Perhaps remaining entirely objective, to the point of not even allowing each other to taunt one another, was the only way we could actually communicate effectively.

"I told him as much of the truth as possible with the obvious exclusion of the bond."

His hard stare turned into one of skepticism, "You told him about the experimentation?"

"I explained all the way down to your unwillingness to participate." I stated, returning to the rows of dominos being slowly and carefully built up around me. "I told you I would handle it."

"And I told you I didn't need you to fight my battles."

My fingers stopped before I let go of the domino, eyes flicking back to him. His question afforded me a good opportunity to address what felt like the fundamental reason he was here tonight, and the reason that all of this was happening. "Why are you so against being partnered with me, Mello?"

I watched as his figure grew somehow even more rigid than it had been when he entered the room. His eyes stared straight back into mine, conveying his messages and reasons through the language I couldn't read.

Perhaps that meant that I wouldn't be able to get anywhere with by him taking the direct approach. "Let me change my question." I looked down, setting the black domino in its rightful position before grabbing another from a box next to me. "Clearly neither of us are too thrilled about being matched together like this. However, considering the circumstances we have little choice but to work together for the common goal of keeping this secret. So," my gaze lifted to him, "how are we going to make this work?"

His stare narrowed on me but I rolled my eyes and cut him off before he had a chance to speak the retort I could practically hear on the tip of his tongue, "Don't say we can't make it work. Obviously that's not an option at this point. Besides, if you were one who just took defeat lying down we would certainly _not_ be having this conversation right now."

Mello's head ticked to the side by a fraction of an inch, the air of skepticism seeping into his form as his stance became less rigid, "Do you always ramble so much when you're nervous?"

My actions came to a sudden halt, practically knocking over my row of dominos in the process. The confident bravado I'd been holding began to fray from pure surprise. "I'm not nervous, Mello."

"Yes, you are."He said, a self-assured smirk crossing his lips and travelled down to his stance as his arms crossed over his chest, _"You're not the only one able to read thoughts."_

I shot a glare at him and his smug smirk. "If we're going to keep this secret we're going to have to stop treating both this and each other like competition. Otherwise we're just going to end up in the same situation we were in today."

Mello's sure look began to crumble beneath the defensive walls I felt shoot up around him. He shifted a bit further and began looking around the room instead, taking in the subtle details so as to not have to look at me. Were the nerves he'd just spoke of rubbing off on him? Something was definitely plaguing his thoughts.

"Why did you do that?" He finally asked; his voice lower now and devoid of the smugness it had held only a moment before.

"You're being vague."

He turned suddenly back to face me, his hair flinging around with him and the motion. "You know what I mean! In class, when I…" His jaw locked, "Why did you say all of that? I could have…" His voice dropped off. Even he couldn't lie and say he could have controlled himself in those moments. "You didn't need to. I didn't need you." There was something slight in his voice that focused my attention entirely upon the mixed, swirl of emotions resonating off him into me and his carefully chosen words.

"Do you always tell others the things you need to hear yourself when you're nervous?" My words were quiet, almost hesitant. It didn't feel like Mello was liable to snap at me for saying such a thing. But at the same time history had also told me that, for as predictable as the blonde was, I had also learned to never underestimate his ability to surprise even me.

In this case, the world momentarily froze around us and his look turned hard and icy on me. "Saying things about shit you don't understand is what got us in this situation, Near." He said with disdain.

"Then explain it to me. We're not getting anywhere by going in these circles." I said, my voice remaining quiet.

The book that resided in Mello and contained all there was to know about him was one which remained firmly closed; only occasionally allowing for brief glimpses inside when the pages were rustled through by outside sources. Gaining access to the treasure trove of information which lay within anyone else's books was always easy. All it took was following the process of carefully lifting the front and back covers, then breaking the spine so the book may be fully opened all the way.

But this was different. This was Mello. This _mattered._ Did I even possess the ability to gain access to his pages without completely breaking him in the process? Today was the first time I'd seen him momentarily break, but it was enough to show me that I did not want to see it again.

However, I still felt the drive to try. I needed to see what lay beneath the surface of him and understand just how his mind worked.

A long exhale fell from Mello's nose, bringing me back to him. I could feel the new sense of defeat, or perhaps acceptance permeating Mello's being as he sank to the floor, crossing his legs and leaning on an open hand on his knee; still wouldn't look at me. Was it shame that kept his eyes from mine? Perhaps shame in himself for giving into me, or for acknowledging that I was right about needing this to work?

"This isn't right." He told me, "This isn't what was supposed to happen."

"So you've said."

Frustrated azure eyes finally shot over to me, only lasting long enough for one to acknowledge his mood. "I was always told that the soul marks created bonds to a person's soul mate as chosen by God." I felt the stress radiating off his being as he struggled to find the right words. Something told me his struggle stemmed from never having told anyone this before. How very interesting.

"My family," he continued, "my mother specifically anyway, was always really religious. She always told me that soul marks were created by God so humans may find their partner, who was supposed to be like one's guardian angel of sorts while we're still on Earth." His eyes remained on the sidewall, mirroring the look of a child about to be scolded. Perhaps _that's_ where his sense of shame originated from, the worry of how ridiculous he must appear saying such a thing to someone such as myself. Was it ridiculous? Of course it was, but hearing the words come out of his mouth… somehow I couldn't quite be sure anymore.

"You believe that?" I took the chance to ask.

He shifted, glaring at me, "Of course I believe it! It's faith. You wouldn't understand." He swallowed hard once. "You think you know so much, Near. But you don't understand what it feels like to think that somewhere out there is a person perfectly designed by God to compliment you to just…" He paused, unable to bring himself to finish the sentence _"To just make the nightmares stop." _I heard him whisper to himself through the channel.

"And then to find out that it's _you_ who holds my name." He said, "It's not right! You are the source of everything that's wrong with my life, and yet this still happened!"

I couldn't help the shift to confusion my facial features took; utterly unfazed by his escalating tone of voice, "That would imply that you think of yourself as knowing better than God."

He scoffed, "It certainly seemed so." His smoldering look penetrated straight through me and an inkling in the back of my mind told me he was there, searching my brain for something. I could only wonder what he was looking for within the winding labyrinth of my mind. "But then today happened." He continued, "I could have killed you just from the frustration of all this. You never let me process through any of it!"

"You didn't tell me any of that, either."

"And then you _use me_ and drag me through Hell! A guardian angel… I _wanted_ to kill you. I would have done it."

"I know." I practically whispered, hanging upon his every word as though he wasn't talking about me or the atrocities I'd done to him since the bond had been generated.

"But you still took it upon yourself to take the situation into your own hands to calm me, to help me. Why?" He stressed the word, leaving it hanging in the air with the static of our rushing thoughts between us.

"I was afraid." I finally answered. He had been so painfully honest and open with me for the first time, how could I even begin to consider the idea of doing anything other than returning the sentiment? "I saw all of the hate and the pain built up inside you. I could feel just how hurt you were by everything I've been doing, and that we've been doing to each other. I saw in that moment that for as angry as you were, you knew you'd gone too far by letting your anger get the best of you."

It was my turn to look away, diverting my gaze as I grabbed at a lock of hair to pull around my finger. "Just because you had dug yourself a hole didn't mean that I had to let you lie in it. I was under the impression that that's what partners did for one another. That being said-."

_"You're doing it again."_ Mello cut me off.

My look flashed back to him, finding the smug grin had found its place plastered across his face once again. Strangely, I found I liked it there more now than I had before.

"No more experiments." He told me, shifting back on his hands, "You want to make this work, don't you? Well that's where we clearly need to start. No more conducting experiments with the bond, _especially_ after I've already said no." While his stipulation limited the progress of what I could hope to learn, it was certainly a fair line for him to draw, all things considered.

"That's fair," I voiced, "But in exchange there needs to be more open lines of communication between us. It would be a great disadvantage for us to just ignore each other and expect everything to work instead of working together to assure nothing gets discovered."

He sent me a glare, "Communication? What the hell do you call this?"

"A start."

He sat in contemplation for a moment, the gears behind his ocular windows grinding away with their rhythmic clanking sound that was becoming second nature for me to hear. Mello began to push himself up off the floor to stand as he continued, 'But I make _no_ reservations about my temper. Bonded or not, you still piss me off."

I followed suit to stand, making careful work to step out from the ring of dominoes I'd built around myself. "I expect nothing less of you, Mello." I told him.

Moving even closer to him I offered my hand out to him, "Partners?"

He paused for a long moment as he looked at my hand between us. Finally his eyes shot up to me and scoffed, "Keep dreaming." He turned away and headed out the door leaving me still in place with the residual energy of all that had transpired and grown between us. For as cold as Mello liked to come across, clearly there was also a level of trust that went along with that.

How fascinating this development of trust we were building was. What else lay beneath his golden crown just waiting to be discovered, read and worked through? The possibilities were endless and as I went and lay down on my bed, new thoughts began to carry me away.

Mello had demanded that I stop experimenting with the bond. Never did he say I couldn't investigate _him_, instead. It was about time I learned what there was to know about Mello.

* * *

A/N: Another relatively quick update! Oh man! So, interesting changes be happening in this story as the plot shifts from Near's robotic investigation of the soul marks to a more humane study into his own partner. It's should be pretty exciting. Thanks to everyone who has been reviewing and supporting this story. You're all so amazing! I will be starting work on the next chapter soon! As usual, let me know your thoughts about this chapter. What are your thoughts now that you know how radically different Mello's belief system is regarding the soul marks?

Please review  
_-Forbiddensoul562_


	8. Could This Be A Lesson In Drowning?

God's Dice

Disclaimer: Please see Chapter 1 for full disclaimer.

* * *

Chapter 8: Could This Be A Lesson In Drowning?

Have you ever sat upon the Earth's surface and just watched life exist around you; the energy exuded in its own way seemingly the single proponent keeping the planet spinning beneath us all? Have you ever watched people's lives unfold before them, all the while you just don't entirely feel a part of what they're experiencing?

The few days after the incident in the classroom between Mello and myself held that feeling. The world around me began to feel different after the confrontation, and after we had had our first meaningful conversation together regarding the bond.

I felt like an amateur actor pulled from the streets and thrown onto a Broadway stage while still expecting me to perform to the high expectations. The students were our audience; their eyes maintained a vigilant watch for any sign that Mello might snap again. Said blonde, on the other hand, appeared to not even notice the stares and the whispers going on between the groups of people.

How strange it was for someone like him to possess the ability to just pass all their judgments off. Mello is at his center nothing short of a contradiction. He seemed to constantly strive to be the center of attention, yet the moment he attained such a level he always seemed to crumble beneath the accumulating sense of concern and expectations that came along with it. Though, perhaps he was merely better at hiding it than I'd originally believed.

Without me realizing when, somewhere between the time that Mello left my room and the following days everything between us had shifted back into a contrived state of perfect order. He stayed on his own with Matt for the most part, leaving the hours that we were in class as the only time our bond actually crossed with one another for an extended amount of time.

In my room he had promised to be more open with the lines of communications between us, yet as I sat bored in my desk I found myself almost reluctant to test out his willingness to speak with him under these circumstances. Almost.

_'Mello.'_ I thought over, breaking the trail of quietly hummed processes and thoughts he'd unknowingly sent storming through my mind from the other side of the room.

_"What?"_ There was a slight air of annoyance in his tone as I interrupted his focus on the lecture.

_'I have a question I'd like to ask you,' _I explained, _'I'm curious to know why exactly you are still faithful.'_

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the pencil that he'd been scratching across the paper stop suddenly. _"Faithful? What are you talking about?"_

_'It's obvious that you still hold some reverence of faith, shown clearly by how often you've spoken of God and angels and betrayal in light of recent events. I'm interested in understanding why that is, and also how your thoughts may have changed or shifted after everything that's happened.'_ I explained, eyeing the prattling teacher to give the impression that I was still paying attention.

_"Are you really asking me this right now? You have no sense of appropriateness, do you?" _

I exhaled slowly, if he was really so concerned with paying attention to the class then it would make more sense to more blatantly answer my questions instead of pandering around the point._ "Why don't you just find your own answers?" _Came his response.

_'One of the conditions of us working together was that I wouldn't experiment any more. I felt that directness was the next best option that respected your wishes.' _I chanced a look over to the opposite side of the room, finding Mello leaning back in his chair, his absent gaze stuck onto the board.

_"Why do you want to know, anyway?"_ He asked, his tone lower and more solemn than before. The few words he muttered were thick with the underlying history that I couldn't quite bring myself to mentally push further into.

_'I told you, pure curiosity.'_ It didn't surprise me that Mello held faith. What surprised me was this emerging revelation of just how deeply he held it into his sense of being as a whole. Where did that come from; what made his sense of faith so persistent throughout all of the hell he'd been raked through?

_"When faith has been a deep part of someone's life, it's not a quality that is just lost, Near."_

_'That doesn't exactly answer the question.' _

I watched the way Mello leaned forward, picking up his pencil again and beginning to half-heartedly take notes as his own way of making sure the teacher believed he was working. _"You wouldn't understand unless you lived it. When everything is taken from you, you only have two options: you blame God and lose faith, or you let it make you stronger from the hardships, and thus it becomes stronger as well."_

_'Then what makes the soul marks so different?'_

_"This is a new level of betrayal. You're not…"_ He paused momentarily just as I felt my heart constrict in my chest in time with Mello's own. Mello had told me all of this before; it wasn't any new information, so where were these reactions in him stemming from? The desire to try to pry into Mello's every thought was becoming overwhelming the more pressure I felt in my chest. _"I'm not talking about this with you."_ He threw at me. Everything I'd been previously feeling at once covered up by a thinly veiled mask and a new itch running up through my finger tips that screamed only one word: run.

My eyes flicked back over to Mello, and it was through these new sensations alone which made it feasible to read just how tense he was becoming as a result of my possibly prying question. But why? What I had asked was such a simple question and had only yielded answers I'd already known. Furthermore, why was this Mello's overall vague response to me if we were supposed to work on communication?

_'Don't run.'_ I advised before his impulses had a chance to take over. _'You'll only make another scene, and right now that is the last thing we need.'_

_"We?"_ He retorted, _"You say it as though we're a collective unit."_

_'No, that's not quite what I-.'_

_"Shut up, Near. Just because we have this bond doesn't change anything about what we are, or how we are towards each other. Everything is still the same as it always has been."_

Listening to the carefully chosen words he sent to me made something click in my mind; suddenly it was as if all the shrouded mysteries dwelling within Mello's actions now had a beam of light cast upon them and in that moment all of his conflicted thoughts and actions made sense to me.

_'Ah, I see.' _I said, a glimmer of a smirk crossing my lips, _'you're bothered by how to go about reconciling how your relationship with me has always been, to the relationship that you've always thought should come about upon being bonded to your supposed soul mate.'_ Perhaps he was even internally battling against himself to keep whatever existed between us the same.

_"I told you I'm done!"_ He practically shouted through our channel, a fiery need to get out of this room travelling up through my hands to my very center, my heart rate beginning to pick up with each passing second that the feeling loomed within me. I took a deep breath, consciously reminding myself of the partnership agreement I had so recently made with Mello; that this was a delicate bridge which I could not afford to burn.

_'Alright, I understand.'_ I responded, breaking off my conscious observance of all his subtle changes and thoughts that he sent pumping through my veins till they slipped smoothly into the background. However, despite his returned silence, I couldn't ignore the seething stream of frustration I'd built up within him that was looking for some form of an outlet.

But it didn't change the revelation that he'd led me to stumble upon through this conversation. The knowledge that at least part of Mello's inner conflict with himself lay within his inability to assuage between the two competing ideas inside him, one being the mixture of defenses and adoration he felt should appear when one bonds, the other being his stubborn desire for normalcy between us and for no growth to come about purely because it was me.

It was an incredibly immature mindset for him to dwell in. Though, in its own way it also intrigued me to want to find out more.

-:-

I continued to wonder about the thoughts that plagued Mello's mind that I couldn't readily read, and the question of what lay beyond his turmoil that he wasn't telling me left me absorbed into the mystery long after our classes ended and our connection became greatly weakened as Mello separated away from me again.

Naturally I could no longer hear him, but for some obscure reason I could still feel his presence and his whirling emotions much better than I had been able to before, when I had conducted my experiments upon our connection. The experiments themselves had had no observable effect upon on our connection, but the moment we made the agreement to partner together the limit had been extended. To what degree I couldn't say, but that wasn't what mattered, what really mattered was figuring out where each of really stood in all of this.

However, that night as I sat on the floor of my bedroom constructing a house of cards before me I couldn't seem to focus on the problem at hand. A dull ache resounded through the back of my head that released a painful wave that somehow resonated, unquestionably from whatever Mello was doing.

The more attention I gave to the feeling the louder the ache seemed to echo painfully through my skull. _'Why can't you just go to bed and let me work?'_

I sighed heavily, the hand holding the next card destined for the house now reaching out and knocking it down to the ground, then bringing myself to stand up, heading out to find a reason for this distraction. Once in the hallway, each step I took made my head feel more and more as though it was swimming within a fog. I could think clearly, and my processes were still all under my control, but the further I went the more I felt as though I needed to keep a more conscious hold over that sense of control I had on myself, lest I become lost within the mist of whatever Mello was doing to his own mind.

I didn't need this right now. Rather, I didn't need to be dealing with _him_ so personally when our interactions in class had already irked him so much. Yet something continued to drive me on through the dark halls of the institution, following only the strengthening of our connection to lead me to his location. Something I didn't understand, something intrinsic deep at the core of my being told me that I needed to find him right now. No, that wasn't quite right. _He_ needed _me_ to find him.

I was finally led to the orphanage's kitchen.

Our bond finally connected together just as I stepped through the doorway, and instantly like the rushing waters pouring out from behind an opening dam Mello's screaming, chaotic thoughts and emotions assaulted my mental stream. A wave of nausea ripped through my being to accompany the sudden charge, and immediately I could put the pieces together to recognize what exactly he was doing.

"You're drinking?"

Mello leaned back against a counter across the space from me, his dulled blue eyes slowly rose up to meet my stare as a thick silence permeated the air, seemingly the result of him needing a moment to register my existence. "Of course _you_ show up."

The smirk he had on then grew by just a fraction as he reached over for a lone glass bottle from the center. "Wasn't my idea. Who knew Roger even kept this stuff down here?" He said before taking a hard swig from the clear liquid inside, sending a disorienting wave surging through my body till I had to grab a counter beside me to assure that I kept my balance. "But damn does it do the job." Mello finished, lifting the bottle again.

"Stop."

He paused, glaring at me. "Why should I?" He asked, his words beginning to slur together. "Because you say so? Because you're _so_ smart? Because you're number one and I'm not?"

"Because the extent of your drinking is making _me_ sick, as well." If this is what I was feeling from him as a third party then I could only begin to imagine exactly what he would be feeling if the alcohol wasn't dulling all of his senses.

Mello's stare on me hardened, "Good! You always make me sick. It's about time you felt the same way."

I resisted the urge to just roll my eyes at his childish logic and leave him to his stupor. But I'd be lying if I said seeing him in such a state didn't spike my curiosity. At the same time my legs felt as though they were made of stone, locked into one single place so I wouldn't be able to leave him to his own inevitable self demise.

"Why are you doing this?" I had to ask. A part of wondered just how far reaching his brutal honesty would go in such a state.

"I don't owe you an answer." He replied instead as more of his weight was shifted onto the counter. I knew I could find the answer in him if it was the answer that I wanted the most, as more and more the corridors that made up the labyrinth of Mello's mind were becoming easier to navigate through as the days that passed by us. But it wasn't _just_ the answer I wanted. I wanted to hear what _he_ would tell me when liquor nullified his inhibitions and rendered his defenses practically nonexistent. "Why should I tell you, anyway? All you do is use things against people. Why don't you just find your own damn answers if you're so curious?"

"I hardly think that'd be polite, Mello." I said carefully, watching his every move for warning signs of change in his attitude. Though at this stage of his intoxication I knew looking for either external or an internal sign was more or less a lost cause. I took a deep breath, but before I could start trying to talk sense into him, he started again.

"I can't do this." He breathed out, his somber eyes moving slowly down to the floor, "I don't know what I'm supposed to do!" I watched and felt the way every muscle in his body grew taut. "I should get a choice. I should get a say for once." His tense form shifted a bit in place, but after a moment he slid from where he'd been leaning with his back against the counter down to the floor.

But even in that second as I watched him my body felt rooted under the sense of confliction. On one hand, I hated having to deal with this same inner turmoil of his when he seemed to be at such an impasse to wanting to find a solution to move forward, but on the other hand through our connected minds, in the back of my head I could feel his gnawing sense of pain, like a burning stake being driven through my heart.

I wanted to actually help him, not just quell down the affliction. I wanted to make him at least accept what fate had done to us, but what was I supposed to say that would ever be convincing? What possible words could I ever even dream of stringing together to help pull Mello's head up from beneath the waters of the tradition he'd been comfortably submerged within that were now drowning him?

I swallowed hard knowing that all I could do was try and see what happened, "There's no reason to say you still don't have a choice." I told him, forcing the stones that were my legs to take a step closer to him.

"That's not how it works," He said with a shake of his head.

"Who says?"

"The entire world!" He looked up at me again, his clouded eyes meeting mine in a way that sent a icy chill down my spine. I hated the murky look in his gaze that substituted its regular confident sharpness. This wasn't Mello… Or rather, what I was seeing before me was a side of him dominated by the self-doubts he otherwise so expertly kept hidden from me and the rest of the world. "You're an idiot, Near, you don't understand how the world works." He told me.

I took another few steps closer to him till I was directly in front of him then knelt to the floor with him. "No, what I don't understand is how _you_ work, Mello." Perhaps it was something in the fog Mello was unconsciously transmitting into my mind which was beginning to have its own affects on my sense of self-control, but as I spoke it seemed that I could only watch as my hand rose and carefully threaded its way through his blonde locks that haloed Mello's flushed face.

"You care so much about these imbued notions of how you think everything in the world should be," I explained as his face turned away from my hand with the slightest of cringes. "What I don't understand is why it's so hard for you to be willing to just carve your own way instead of following what you see as this predestined fate. Or why you find it such an abhorrent idea to follow the ways of the world that you put so much credibility into." I finally voiced the thoughts that'd been plaguing my mind that I hadn't felt able to tell him.

He scoffed at me as I threaded another lock of the fine golden silk around my index finger, "You don't understand."

"How can I understand when you never tell me anything?" The spinning motion of his of hair came to a stop, the lock loosening around my finger as I looked at our current positioning; at how very close we were to each other in this one moment. A single strand of thought threaded its way through my mind. _'Maybe there is a way that I could understand.'_

His look moved over to me, "Don't."

_'Do you want me to understand or not? You can't expect me to be able to find a solution to your problem if I don't first understand what you're feeling.'_

He shook his head, "That's not what I mean. This is a bad idea. Don't…"

As I watched him, I had to quickly weigh the current options set before me, or rather before us. Was the greater good of finally attaining a true understanding of Mello's mind worth the potential risk of how he would react to such a deep-seated violation to his space and privacy? Was the greater good really worth the destruction of the few if it was the few that actually mattered? Of course it was. Everything in my body screamed that the investigation was _always_ the most important thing at the end of the day. Even when my partner so was so earnestly, so frightfully begging me not to cross that single line.

The end was suddenly not justifying the means, and I couldn't even begin to consider how to handle such a phenomena.

Was this what it felt like to truly be human feel the turmoil of emotional confliction that came along with the human experience? If so I didn't like it. I didn't like _this_. But what else could I do?

_'Listen to me, Mello,_' I began to reason with him,_ 'this isn't you. The Mello I know doesn't answer to the rules or standards anyone puts down. I'm the one who follows rules, you're the one who sets out to break them because you make the world work for you, not the other way around. The way I know you, you should be taking what you call this divine betrayal and using it to find a way to best me. Am I wrong?'_

"That's not what I-."

_'Am I wrong?'_

His endless azure eyes moved to meet the gray of my own, somehow through his drunken haze he seemed to stare straight through me to my core that lay beyond the heavily fortified walls around me. We watched each other through a silence that didn't require the use of words or justifications; through the thick air there existed only a fundamental understanding.

His stare finally hardened on me, a weak semblance of an attempt at defensive walls being raised once more. "Do it." He said solidly without room to question or think on it. I didn't need to hear anything else.

Our actions moved like the well-timed Broadway act we had been expected to perform through the moment the sense of mutual understanding slipped like warm water through both of our consciousnesses. This was perhaps the only way I could ever hope to begin trying to actually understand Mello and I was not about to let anything at all botch this precious opportunity between us.

My fingers that had been locked within his hair, slipped down and both my hands came to rest upon his warmed, flush cheeks. Mello's deep pools of blue closed as he moved in perfect time with me; as though all his energy had been expended in that one moment, his head lowered down till his forehead rested against mine.

Watching him, all I could do was stare in shock. Never in my wildest imaginations did I think that I would ever be permitted to being this close to Mello; to the point of practically sharing the same air.

My eyes finally slipped closed as a single thought from Mello ran through my mind in a hushed murmur, _"I'm trusting you."_

_'I wouldn't break that. You worry far too much.'_

As my world went black it felt as though an entirely new channel had been opened between Mello and myself through just the mere physical contact of us together. I felt the heavy fog of impaired judgment covering his mind just as I had before from the other side of the room, but it was intensified now and for the briefest of moments I couldn't be sure if there was necessarily any difference between Mello and my psyche anymore. Or perhaps even at the most fundamental of our very being…

There was no doubt that the air being pulled slowly into my lungs was shared between the two of us and as I mentally pushed my way through the wall of mist clouding Mello's rational mind, it felt more as though I was pushing into thoughts, feelings and memories that were suddenly my own as well.

Like a jolt of electricity to my system it all hit me the moment I oriented myself beyond Mello's inebriation to all which he had been trying to hush down for but a single night.

At once I was consumed by a myriad of swirling emotions I couldn't completely grasp at once. Unspeakable levels of pain, sorrow, love, hopelessness, all buried down within the recesses of his mind where not an ounce of light could disturb its delicate vortex. I saw flashes memories. Glimpses of long, golden locks of hair before my eyes that shown with the brilliance of the sun and carried the sweet, unforgettable fragrance of lavender and vanilla. I felt the comforting sensation of being wrapped up within seemingly wise words that spoke of love and promises of protection and limitless security.

Yet at the same time the words came hinged with a dark, spiteful undertone that even I couldn't quite understand when connected this close to Mello. Something was wrong with the image before me, the promises and the love had all been for naught, but the memory whispered from within its subtle shadows that the feelings weren't because of me. This was something else. Something big. Something so painful that it had broken Mello.

But what was it? What happened?

I tried to push further on, feeling the frigid sensation of total isolation rush down my spine and bite at my extremities. He didn't want to show me what lay beyond this point, but I persisted. There was no protection here, there was no fulfillment of the promises made what seemed like so long ago, and so long ago broken. But what stood now in its place instead was the promise that'd arisen out of a childish sense of fear; one which swore to never let the same thing ever happen again.

And yet here we were. This wasn't what Mello wanted. This wasn't at all what he had promised himself that he would make happen. This isn't what we expected. How does one reconcile the two opposing sides of one's own soul that are so fundamental to their very being?

I pulled out of Mello's mind, hardly able to handle the mental and emotional onslaught he was throwing upon me. His eyes slipped open as he pulled back from me again, my hands falling away instantly as we both took a moment to watch each other and to process just how the other was handling what we had just experienced.

I couldn't say for sure how I was handling what I had just seen within him. But what I did know was that I certainly didn't have the answers he was searching for.

But as I looked back at him, staring into those brilliant eyes that were wondering what I thought now that I had seen so far into him, something deep in the pit of my being felt different… as though we were separated, the deep connection gone, yet the longing for that bond to remain in place had left its own resonance.

It was as if something crucial was changing that I didn't have the proper word to define. Or perhaps Mello's sense of self-doubt was leaking into my mind and was holding me back from taking hold of the word that was churning within me. I didn't have the confidence to say it, and Mello didn't have the stability needed to hear it.

He leaned back, his head hitting the counter with a light thud, "I still hate you."

"I know, Mello."

But did he? All the evidence was beginning to say otherwise.

* * *

A/N: I don't even know if I want to talk about this chapter. I played around with the idea of an inebriated Mello in my mind on a long bus ride, and somehow it just ended up on the page. Though, to be fair what you received here was a very toned down version of what I originally had planned on putting out. So perhaps it's not as out of character as I keep telling myself it is... Anyway, thanks for all the support on the last chapter! Also, I'd like to draw your attention to a poll on my profile at the moment which is looking to hear whether or not you, the reader, would be interested in reading a version of this story told from Mello's point of view. So please go vote in that, or leave me your thoughts on such a scenario in a review! I keep planning this story out from both sides of the point of view, so I would like to know if I should actually be planning on writing any of that down for later. Anyway, as I said, I'm really concerned/sickened by the characterizations in this installment so I'd appreciate your thoughts on this chapter. Next installment soon!

Please review  
_-Forbiddensoul562_


	9. Could You Keep A Promise?

God's Dice

Disclaimer: Please see Chapter 1 for full disclaimer.

* * *

Chapter 9: Could You Keep A Promise?

_'Breathe. Just relax. It's going to be fine. Focusing on breathing will make it easier.'_

_"If you tell me to breathe one more time, Near, I swear…"_ The sick twisting feeling which gripped my stomach alerted me to the cause for Mello's unfinished sentence.

I leaned back against the wall which connected my bedroom to the bathroom which Mello currently occupied. A wave of nausea overtook me from head to toe, leaving the world spinning off its axis around me till I had to close my eyes just to try and make it stop.

The drunken haze Mello inflicted on us began to make memories events pass by my state of awareness in its own haze. As I leaned back and stared unseeing into the rest of my room I began to realize that I was losing touch with even the most recent of memories. I could no longer seem to remember the fine details of how exactly we had even gotten to my room.

I remembered pulling out of his consciousness and telling him that it was crucial that we get to one of our rooms before someone discovered Mello in his inebriated state. Mello had been the one to insist on going to my room, but he offered no real reason as to why other than that it was more convenient. I didn't question him, instead letting him force his way off his floor while stubbornly refusing my help to get upstairs.

Almost immediately after we got here, though, he'd retreated to the bathroom; I could feel the sick sensation of the liquor taking its revenge against him for insisting on moving even the distance from the kitchen to the room. Why did he always find ways to include me into these unfortunate scenarios? What could _I_ have possibly done to deserve being coupled with this sort of almost karmic backlash?

Though at the same time, even though I felt my stomach lurch together into a sick mass of confusion and chaos mixed with the shared experience of liquor rolling around in a lopsided ball, a part of me was glad I'd investigated all of this in the first place and come to Mello's aid. Who could say what might've happened if anyone else; or perhaps even no one at all had found him.

_"Stop."_ Mello's voice rang through my head. _"You're over-thinking and it's just making things worse here."_

_'My apologies.'_ I uttered quietly, though truthfully speaking I wanted nothing more than to tell him just the opposite. I wanted to tell him that he deserved to feel even more sick from my thoughts than he already was. That seemed like a fair trade for him making _me_ sick from his drinking in the first place. But I knew that placing blame for anything that wouldn't get us anywhere fast. _'How are you feeling?'_

From beyond the closed door I heard the toilet flush as if it was done in response to my question, then was pulled open. "It's fine." Mello asserted out loud as he attempted to conceal his own sense of disorientation by grabbing onto the doorframe for support. As though suddenly forgetting that I could perfectly well feel exactly what he was. "I just need to sleep for a while and it'll be fine." He explained as though needing to tell himself that fact, though his words came out with just a slight slur to them.

I moved from where I had been leaning against the wall to instead sit on my bed, all the while cautiously watching as Mello took a few careful steps into the room then sat down on the floor. His upper torso wavered just slightly back and forth for only a moment before allowing himself to lie back fully against the wooden floor.

I watched all his actions and finally gave a small sigh, "Wouldn't it make more sense to just go to your own room, Mello?" As I posed the question to him I laid down on my mattress, laying on my side so that I could still keep a vigilant eye on him. The absolute last thing I needed was for him to be sick on my bedroom floor…

He shook his head, "No, here works better. I can't deal with Matt right now. I'll handle all of that later."

My brow creased together curiously, "Deal with Matt?"

"Yeah." He said with a huff of finality in his tone. Clearly that was the only clue I was going to be getting out of him in regards to that mystery. I still couldn't help wondering what exactly was going on between them. I took the precious yet vague hint I'd been given and locked that knowledge away to look into at a later time, when the world wasn't spinning around me.

The room fell into silence, the quiet sense of solitude passing not only though the air but our shared channel as well as the liquor seemed to fulfill its desired effect of hushing his racing thoughts. My eyes stayed on the blonde laying upon the floorboards for yet another moment, "You don't have to sleep on the floor, Mello," I heard myself say, "You know that sleeping there won't do anything to help the aftereffects you're going to feel in the morning."

His crisp blue eyes slid open once more, staring up at the ceiling as he processed my words before then letting his head roll over to me, "What, you're saying you're going to share your bed with me instead?"

I shrugged, "It's just sleeping next to each other."

He chuckled as his gaze moved back up to the ceiling, "Near, you are such an idiot."

Despite the seemingly condescending words which fell from his lips after another second passed by he finally pushed his body up off the floor again, wobbling only momentarily while he got his balance. I shifted over to the other side of the bed so he could lie down. He lay down on his back; the gap between us was physically minimal yet at the same time we couldn't have been further apart than the width of any of the world's oceans.

In that silent moment I observed the subtle details of his figure, taking in all the fine traits that I somehow seemed to overlook during the day in the midst of our forced stage performances. His chest lightly rose and fell in peaceful succession, the air moving in and out of his nose in an even stream. Every feature on his face had become relaxed, for once lacking the otherwise obvious contours of the guarded wall he usually held up against not just me, but to the rest of the world as well.

Looking at how peaceful he looked now brought me back to what seemed like only a single moment ago, to when he had allowed me the chance to see what I could into his mind to all that plagued him. With that in mind, my look hardened on him slightly, "Did you see what I saw?" I asked, my voice coming out in a whisper, as though if I spoke too loudly whatever powers that be would take notice of our shared moment and set out to ruin it.

Mello's eyes slid open onto me, merely giving a slight 'hm' sound in response.

"When I looked into your mind could you see what I was seeing?" I elaborated.

He watched me for another long moment, his eyes saying all the words his lips couldn't seem to form, yet somehow at the same time there was something in his tired stare that told me he was trying to read into any motives I may have. He was always the suspicious type. Not that I could blame him. He finally shifted, turning to lie on his side so we faced each other "Yeah, kind of." He said. "It wasn't that cut and dry, though… I didn't exactly see what you saw, because I saw something of my own. But I do know what you looked at."

"Would you tell me about what I saw?"

Mello sighed, the smell of alcohol brushing across my skin as he did so. I resisted the urge to cough at the foul odor. "You're not going to let this go, are you?"

"Of course not." He should really know better than that. When do I ever let things go when they're providing such an interesting mystery for me?

He exhaled once more, but the sense of defeat in his tone told me that I had won. His eyes closed and I felt the beating heart in my chest pick up as I began counting his breaths, hoping he didn't fall asleep before telling me his story. Who knew if he'd still be so forthcoming about such an otherwise taboo subject in the morning?

After a moment, he began. "Throughout my life my mother has been the only person I've ever really had. She was an amazing woman who did everything she could to give us a good life despite raising me alone. She tried to make sure I was brought up right, you know, with morals and values. She taught me about faith, and told me about what the soul marks were designed to do."

His eyes flashed open and before I could register the sudden change of state in the orbs he suddenly pushed me down onto my back, his body shifting to lean almost directly over mine. In that moment all we could do was stare at each other, the air caught between our locked eyes charged by the energy of our dynamics all muddled together in a cloud of electricity. His stare was fire upon my icy skin, seeming to melt my body into a puddle of utter insignificance between the confines of his arms on either side of me.

His eyes finally trailed away from mine and down my frozen figure, his words continuing to pass on the warmth otherwise lost by his stare, "My dad was my mom's soul mate. They'd been bonded together for a long time, I think. I never met him. The asshole left her alone with me when I was born. He left her with literally nothing."

Mello's fingers moved up from where they'd been, fumbling to undo the top buttons of my shirt. I found myself to be caught within the fragile strands of his spun web of words around me to either help or stop what he was doing now. Perhaps a part of me feared that any movement made on my part would wake Mello from the drunken reminiscent trance my request had sent him into.

Though at the same time, perhaps I just didn't want to know which of the two options I would have chosen. Would I help him undo the clasps, or stop him completely?

"My dad her left even though he could feel her emotions and hear her thoughts when they were together. They were connected together but that didn't matter to him at all. I watched my mom kill herself just to make sure that we made it through every day; to make sure that _I_ made it! Yet she still made time to make sure that I knew just how important soul mates are in this world. I think a part of her never stopped hoping that he would come back to her eventually." The top three buttons of my white pajama shirt had been undone revealing just enough access to allow Mello to push the material away on my left side, till the pale white letters of the soul mark became visible to his azure orbs.

He exhaled heavily as his eyes carefully trailed over the fine letters printed on my skin. His thoughts moved into my brain through a thick fog, but from what I could make out seeing his name imbedded into my flesh was a rather surreal moment. For Mello, in that second, it was the letters comprising a name to which he no longer identified with which drove our perhaps divine connection home much harder than even the mental connection itself ever could.

"I watched her die." He whispered, pushing through his marveled state, "All that hope she'd had… the suffering he'd put her through…" He swallowed hard, "Back then I promised myself that if I ever found my soul mate I'd never put them through any of the same hell that she went through. But I never expected it to be you. It changes everything…"

I could look nowhere other than his eyes, watching them continue to follow the lines of his name over my heart and seemingly begin to darken in shade. I felt the shift in his mood; the way he was looking back on his past and feeling all that animosity he held towards his father, and the sorrow he had for his mother.

Instantly and without question my heart raced into action, the impulse reactions becoming easier to just follow through with than they'd been in the past when I acted to help him in those times that he needed it. My hand reached out to him, touching the line of his chin and moving up to his warm, flushed cheek before finally threading them up into the strands of his honey golden hair. I didn't have, or even dare to try to find the words to fix this.

Somehow the mere actions must have translated over, for the look in his eyes began to lighten though they simultaneously seemed to grow heavy with the fatigue weight of his words; already what he had expounded upon was a lot to consider. His eyes slipped closed momentarily and his body began to lower down till the warmth of his cheek lightly met the coolness of my chest; his satiny golden threads of hair colored my pale skin in a way I'd never imagined I'd see it.

"Mello?"

"I'm done talking about that." He told me definitely and I was in no place to argue against him. Perhaps it was my own need for an outlet for my hands, or perhaps I could read that he needed to feel some sense of reassurance, but my fingers moved to his hair again, taking time to learn how to properly spin such a long the thread around my fingers.

"You know that I expect absolutely nothing from you." I told him, my voice remaining quiet. "There's no reason you should have to put yourself through this because you feel the need to keep an age old promise to yourself based on more or less a divine fluke."

Mello's breath exhaled from his nose onto my skin in a sigh. "God doesn't make mistakes, nor does he play dice with the universe."

My brow creased and my gaze shifted from where it had been starring unfocused up at the ceiling down to him. "Mello?"

I was met with no response from him. Through the silence surrounding us I could hear the soft hum of his mind continuing to work, thinking over all that he had said to me and continuing to reminisce back into his memories. I wondered briefly if this was part of why he was never willing to tell me anything about his inner struggles, not so much because of what they dealt with or even because it was me, but instead because he had such a difficult time pulling himself back out of the past.

With a final exhale of breath I decided not to push him further than I already had that night. We both deserved a rest after the seemingly endless waves which had assaulted us for what was beginning to feel like a lifetime of an evening. Though, a prickling sensation at the back of my head said that rest wouldn't come easy for him.

My fingers continued to spin his hair around my index finger, evermore skillfully entangling themselves within the locks then releasing them in succession as my eyes slipped closed, hoping that, just maybe my own inner sense of peace would translate over to the blonde and allow him to finally rest. As I hoped and tried to direct all the feelings onto him, I felt my consciousness beginning to slip away from my grasp.

That night I dreamt of butterflies.

I dreamt of them flying about every which way through an open expanse, seeming ever so content with being wherever the wind took them for they knew only that imbued sense of happiness and state of existence. But the longer I saw them the longer I felt as though there was something missing within the hearts of the wistful butterflies. There was something critical to their being which was missing within their sense of identity. The feeling was becoming ever more persistent until each flap of their wings felt almost as tragic to watch as it did outwardly tranquil.

* * *

A/N: Well, this chapter was definitely shorted than the rest of the chapters I've posted thus far. Mainly that's due to the fact that if I kept going, this chapter would have ended up being nearly 15 pages or so, so I decided to break it up. But hopefully it was enjoyable regardless of length. Thank you to everyone who has reviewed and favorited this so far, and everyone who has put their vote in for the re-write of this story! You are all utterly amazing and I cannot say that enough. Feel free to keep voting on that, of course. I'm anxious to hear your thoughts, so please let me know what you thought of this installment!

Please review  
_-Forbiddensoul562_


	10. Could It Mean Anything At All?

God's Dice

Disclaimer: Please see Chapter 1 for full disclaimer.

* * *

Chapter 10: Could It Mean Anything At All?

I hadn't known what comfort really felt like until I slept next to Mello.

No… that claim was far too much of an overstatement, not to mention almost absurdly too cliché. Let me start over again. I hadn't truly known the feeling of isolation until my waking eyes were greeted by the cold spot on my bed where the said blonde had been just a few hours prior.

The construction of that sentence, or even the concept itself, doesn't make things _sound_ any better. But it somehow it was the only way my mind seemed to be able to grapple with those two polar opposite sensations to communicate them into coherent thoughts.

When Mello and I had both fallen asleep the previous night, the minute physical contact and the overall relative vicinity to one another had granted me the chance to again see inside Mello's head -this time in the form of a shared dream. However, at the same time, whenever it was that he had awoken and decided to leave the actions had left my sleeping conscious lost within its own void without a means for illumination or direction. He created and controlled the dream, and thus when it inevitably ended and was taken, I had been left with nothing.

My room was left a stagnant box of ice, unmoving and impenetrable to any sense of change when that blonde ball of fire wasn't around. Though, as I lay there looking out to my familiar surroundings and thinking on the events of the previous night I found a bit of myself missing the chaotic sense of impulsion that followed him.

That being said, from the chilling stagnancy arose up the obvious question that lay dormant in my head; the one I'd been trying not to let myself ask. _'Where did he go?'_ I wondered almost foolishly. Obviously he'd gone back to his room, probably to try and ward off any sort of questions or suspicions from Matt. What bothered me about letting myself wonder such a ridiculous question was not the answer itself so much as it was the wonderment of why exactly I _cared_ at all? Did I care? Of course I didn't.

Though, beyond that, what made me give the question any real life was the very events themselves of the previous night which stuck like a thick sap to the back of my sights.

_'Mello was rather forthcoming last night. No doubt a side effect of his drinking escapade.'_ I thought to myself as I shifted to lie on my back and stare at the ceiling instead of staring endlessly upon the wooden grains of my door.

_'I thought his willingness to actually share so much of himself to be a rather significant turning point in our standing with each other.'_ I mused to myself as one of my hands trailed down to rest on my lower stomach, _'But if that was indeed the case then what's causing this deep seated feeling of unease in the pit of my stomach now?'_

I exhaled slowly, closing my eyes and trying to bring the feeling under control in an attempt to cease it entirely. _'I suppose in theory it could make sense that Mello awoke this morning and realized what he'd done and is brooding on his regret of it now.'_ I justified as the most likely scenario.

_'How unfortunate that he's so avidly against progress.'_ That being said, I also had to consider for myself what my own justifications were for being so adamant. Was I looking for progress for any other reason than the ulterior motive of learning more about who Mello was as a person and where exactly he had come from? I liked to think not but something in the pit of this unease told me that things weren't that clear-cut.

My eyes opened back onto the silence of my room, feeling in that moment as though the very eyes of God were upon me. Watching. Judging. But judging what? What could possibly make _me_ the target of such attention?

Who knew, considering that, as Mello has implied numerous times before, God tends to work in the most mysterious of ways and for the most enigmatic of reasons.

_'Mello's lucky it's Saturday.'_ I thought, pulling myself up from the mattress and immediately feeling the way my bones seemed to creak beneath me, though at this point it was nearly impossible to discern who was bringing what to whom. Was it always this indecipherable or was it just Mello and I? _'There's no way he's not feeling the effects from last night. If he was expected to perform in class today… I shudder to even imaging what sort of show he would put on for everyone.'_

Though on second thought, the vindictive part of me almost wanted to see what would come about in such a scenario. Perhaps Mello would have another mental break at some point…

I stepped into the warm spray of my shower in an attempt to both ease my troubling thoughts and try to relax perhaps not only the feeling of my sore muscles, but Mello's as well. As the warm water cascaded in rivers down my body I took a meditative moment to focus on the bond in the hopes of establishing just where we stood.

Last night I had yet again been there for Mello when he needed it, but that hadn't come without our bond providing the feeling of something going wrong; a sensation which I'd felt despite the large amount of distance between his location, and mine. That intuitive knowledge had reached me, and yet this morning what I did feel from him was faint and hardly distinguishable from anything I was feeling.

Did that fact say anything for how synched together we'd become, or did it speak more for the state of the bond itself?

For reasons I couldn't even begin to understand, a shiver ran down my spine and I immediately knew I needed to find out. Perhaps this was the reason why God's eyes were upon me, not so much judging as watching our, no, _my_ performance to gauge just what I would do in the face of so much on the line.

It could very possibly be that He was testing just what I would do about this, though as I stood beneath the water that was quickly becoming cold, even I couldn't be sure what I was going to do. Mello may have been chosen as my partner for this world and this life, but there was only so much that even _I_ was willing to take, and his persistent indecision was quickly finding my limit.

After finishing showering and getting dressed I headed out of the room, my thoughts honed in on determining where exactly our current situation stood. I never cared much for maintaining the interpersonal relationships with people, but I let the consideration go as it was beginning to seem as though everything in my world always had a way of turning utterly backwards when it had anything to do with Mello.

Now it seemed that even the excuse that all my efforts were an attempt to maintain some semblance of peace between us was beginning to wear thin.

A pang ran through my heart and brought me to a standstill barely halfway down the hall. As if just one single step had been all it'd taken, suddenly my body was overtaken by a sense of warmth that'd been devoid of me before this moment. I could feel that it all stemmed from a sense of need, of craving, of longing. No, this was deeper than that, this was a feeling driven by some desperate sense of lust.

The longer I stood there the stronger the sensation became, and the more my stomach churned till I thought it might make me sick. I felt as though my body was being held above an open flame. My heart began to race in my chest, this feeling of yearning burning within my center.

_'Ah, I see.'_ I told myself as my eyes widened by a fraction of an inch as they moved over to the single door in question. _'So this is what you've ultimately decided?'_ The longer I watched the unchanging wood, the more I listened to the hushed echo of Mello's emotions within my heart, the clearer the picture was becoming for me. A feeling of hate and of anger that I couldn't begin to control or necessarily place smoldered within me.

The sense of lust radiating off Mello's being was stifling, but beneath that there was the question which remained, his unbridled sense of confusion. But that was understandable. Within the blonde there existed two sides of him, one which would never be able to move past his hatred, and one that wanted to live up to his sense of morals. Giving in to one side or the other wouldn't necessarily qualm the other, or create an instant paradigm shift in his personality, and more and more I was beginning to think that Mello would never be happy with that fact.

_'Though at the rate that he's been taking everything, it's not unreasonable to question whether or not Mello could ever attain any semblance of stable happiness in his life.'_ I thought to myself, taking a slow and careful step forward, feeling as though each movement was like wading through a rushing river.

Almost immediately I stopped myself, _'Happiness?' _I considered, my body taking control to move a few steps back the way I'd come so there was no chance of Mello hearing my thoughts. _'Which option is in the best interest of Mello's happiness? The option where he learns to deal with who he's partnered with, or the option where he denies God and decides the events of his life for himself? At this point is it even worth continuing to get involved?'_

My brain continued to work despite how badly something in me said that all I wanted was for a moment of silence. I questioned what possible benefits could ever be obtained from either of those options, but the sense of nagging gripping at my heart brought on by Mello's current actions said that any benefits I could receive one way or another would only be a nice addition to the overall conclusion either side would grant for him.

"Near?" A meek voice broke through the high-rise walls I had erected, it's plaster tarnished by the material evidence of the investigation into Mello and everything that came with him.

My vision came into focus and on the other side of the hall I saw Linda standing with her notebook held in front of her and a bewildered look in her brown eyes. As if noticing that I'd just come back to the present she continued, "Are you okay? I said your name three times before you even noticed me here." There was a sense of unease etched within her tone, though will all the emotions rushing through me from the events happening just beyond the door it was difficult to place whether the pitch of her voice was due to general nerves, or because of the events from the last time we'd spoken. My bet was on the latter.

"Yes, I apologize, I was just thinking." I explained, shifting my stance only slightly and grabbing at the locks of hair atop my head.

My brain kicked into overdrive again almost immediately. The calculations I had drawn up involving Mello and myself were written in stark black and gray ink, though with Linda's presence, a fine sliver of pink was factored onto my side of the equation. If I couldn't adequately decide on my own where I stood within the dilemma that is _always_ Mello, then perhaps she could help be the buffer that allowed me to work through to my decision. After all, I may have begun to understand soul marks and bonds better, but all of that knowledge was for naught when you're unable to remain entirely practical about it all.

In that moment I was glad I'd moved away from the area in which he could hear my thoughts. If he'd heard me utter that statement he would have a field day with it. He was always immature that way.

"Actually, Linda," I started, pushing all other thoughts and musings to the side for the moment, "I believe it would be beneficial to have your assistance via obtaining your opinions on a few matters." I explained, exhaling in a sort of defeat after I said it.

I watched the way she blinked a few times in surprise, "Me?" She practically squeaked. "You need _my_ opinion on something, Near?" No, I never said 'need'. Need implied that the progress of this case rested in obtaining the information she had in her, and while said data could in fact be useful, I in no way saw how it could be inherently necessary.

"Something like that." I responded, turning back to the privacy of my bedroom.

"Well, what do you need?" She asked as she trailed after me quickly, the tone in her voice picking up with excitement as I entered the room again and took a seat upon the floor; a sense of déjà vu loomed in the background as I watched from the corner of my eye as she took a seat on the side of the bed.

"Recently I've been conducting a bit of an investigation on members of Wammy's House. I'm interested in observing the way they interact with one another in terms of romantic interpersonal relationships."

"Does this have to do with why you were interrogating Ren and Mimi a few weeks ago?" She questioned, her fingers trailing nervously over the metal coils of her notebook.

I eyed her quickly, "Somebody told you about that?"

"Of course. Everyone knows you were talking to them about their bond and their relationship." Of course they did. People _always_ have to find a reason to gossip about even the most minuscule of things. Her gaze moved over to me, "You're still interested in learning more about soul marks and bonds?" The slowly moving gears behind the orbs showed how she was attempting to read me. What could she possibly think that she knew? Or rather what did she think she could discern from me? Really, she should know better than that.

I looked over to a puzzle lying abandoned at the side of the room and moved to slide it towards me, turning it over and beginning work on it. "Of course." I chided, "A good detective knows and understands human motive so as to be able to implement such knowledge during cases. I myself am not so well-versed in these areas and as such it's imperative that I do what I can to attain the same level of understanding."

She nodded, "So… what do you need from me?" The nervousness she'd held before while standing in the hallway reappeared in her tone. Perhaps she was worried that I had asked for her assistance just to bring attention to the rash actions she'd done during the beginning stages of my investigation.

"As I stated before I'm looking for your opinion." Talking with her was dull and for the briefest of seconds I found myself almost wishing it was Mello I was having this discussion with. Regardless of the bond which allowed him a way to see the information I was after, conversations and interactions just seemed to move faster. There was a sense of understanding between our dynamics that somehow spoke and communicated the messages between us quicker than speaking with anyone else ever did. For now I'd just have to work with what I had.

"Do you think it's plausible for bonded soul mates to exist without being tied within a relationship together?" I proceeded to question, silencing down my own biases.

Her motions stopped for a moment and her eyes fell to the side wall, her lips pursing a bit as she considered the question, "Of course it is." She stated. "There are a lot of people who don't even find their soul mates till after they're married and have kids together. I've read stories of people who find each other when they're already with someone else and instead of tearing apart their families, it becomes a way for the two families to exist together instead."

I sighed, placing a puzzle piece upon the board and holding it down tightly with my index finger, "That's not quite what I meant. What I am looking to understand is what you think the mental state of a person would be if they were not with their soul mate; especially if they've found the soul mate already. How does one reconcile their turning away from God's design?"

She looked over at me with a small giggle, "God? Since when do you believe in God?"

"I never said that I did."

"Nobody really believes in God anymore, Near. You should know that. Only foolish people who don't know how to face the world on their own really believe in all of that." There was something about the way she worded her sentence that made me question whether she actually believed what she was saying, or if she was saying it because she thought that that was the sort of thing I wanted to hear. Who was more foolish: those who put their faith in a God they can't see, or those who based their opinions on what they feel the rest of the world wanted them to think?

"Let's entertain for a moment the idea that someone is truly faithful and they already have someone they're in a relationship with, but then they find their partner. What would someone do?"

Linda contemplated the question for a moment, keeping her eyes from me as she flipped open her notebook to a clean sheet of paper and began absentmindedly sketching with a pencil that'd been stuck behind her ear. "I'm not sure." She said, making me almost instantly sigh with how frustrating it was to try and discuss things with her. Why had I ever believed this to be a good idea? "But, what I do know is that most people in the world are looking for happiness above almost everything else. So, in that case, they should probably go with whoever makes them the happiest, whether that's the soul mate, or the partner they already have."

"That goes against God's will."

She shrugged, "What God would be angry with his own creations just for finding happiness in someone other than their partner?"

My movements on my puzzle pieces paused. She had a good a good point. Why would any deity depicted as being benevolent, let alone omniscient, have any real issue with people being with someone other than who their marked for? But when you've promised Him and yourself, and when you've come to accept what you feel you need to do in life in terms of following supposed divine order, would someone, would Mello, be able to reconcile his search for happiness with divine?

Based on what I had felt just this morning it would appear so…

"Did you find your soul mate, Near?" Linda's voice broke me out of the trance I hadn't realized I'd slipped into.

I looked up to find her expectant brown eyes upon me, the hand that gripped her pencil had come to a halt upon the paper. There was a flicker of interest which gleamed within her orbs, hardly able to keep patient as she waited for the response. Why was she so interested in figuring out who people, or rather who _I_, was bonded with?

"Of course not. I told you the last time we spoke that I could care less about the idea of finding my own soul mate. It's everyone else's I'm interested in investigating into the mechanics of. No doubt someday I'm sure there will be a case I work on which can only be solved through the use of such an understanding of people's way of thinking."

I could just hear what Mello would say at this point: "You're nervous again." In that chiding way he'd utterly perfected. How idiotic. What reason did I have to be nervous?

She hummed for a moment, closing her notebook again as she stood from her spot; her eyes remained fixed on me, now holding the glimmer of an insightful expression that I couldn't quite read, "Everybody wants to be happy, Near. Even you. Just remember that." My look narrowed on her as I stood to go with her to the door. This room was becoming increasingly more suffocating. Perhaps it was that same looming stare that seemed to still be so intent to watch me.

"You know, if you're so interested in figuring out how humans act and how they feel about others, the best way to do that is to intermingle with them and actually be around to see and read them." She commented as we both exited from my room back out into the long hallway.

"Yes, so I've heard." I muttered, shutting the door before beginning to walk down the hall for the second time that day. "However, intermingling is how people always seem to lose their sense of objectiveness and practicality." Those were qualities I couldn't afford to lose any grip over. But… with everything that continued to happen with Mello, could I in fact say that I had remained entirely practical anymore?

The conflicted and confused sense began to toss and turn within my center as I got closer to Mello's shared room, till finally I felt myself step within the boundary in which our consciousnesses became linked together, though as best I could I tried to keep my thoughts as quiet as I could. With everything weighing on my mind as heavy as it was in its current state of turmoil I wasn't sure if any interactions between the blonde and myself would be beneficial anymore.

We were almost through the boundary, to the relative quiet of my own tumultuous mind again, when the door to their room opened. As if I'd been guided by an invisible force I came to a halt, turning just slightly to the new opening as the familiar voices began to filter out.

"You never know, maybe they'll have some more chocolate downstairs or something." Came Matt's voice as he and Mello stepped out into the hallway.

I was paralyzed in place, watching and reading the situation and all the emotions relaying off Mello's form. His blue eyes moved up to mine, the look in them dulled and absent of their usual spark. This wasn't the expression of a hangover from his drinking. Something wasn't right with him, but his mind was deceptively quiet as he did a damn good job of hiding whatever was happening to him. A wave passed between the two of us of all the things neither of us could say to each other, though as it hit me the words were convoluted and foreign to any language I knew.

Almost immediately my observant eyes caught sight of something not quite right on Mello's figure, a deep red or almost brown shaded mark stuck out on his collar bone beneath the edge of his shirt. A hickey? A deep seated sense of anger began bubbling within my center and in that moment I couldn't control my thoughts.

_"Don't ask."_

_'I wasn't going to. I don't care.'_

_"You don't understand what's going on."_

_'I'm not trying to anymore.'_

Our stare locked together, intense enough that I thought the air between us might explode into flame. Finally he huffed at me, "Are you just going to stand there? Move!" With that the blonde pushed past Linda and I and continued on his way down the stairs, the sense of frustration and confliction beginning to subside the further away he moved.

"Sorry about him. He's been in a bad mood all morning." Matt commented with a shrug, moving from the doorway he'd stopped in to begin following after his friend.

As he crossed me path, one of his hands reached up and pulled his goggles from his forehead down over his eyes, those green orbs met mine for the briefest of seconds, but just long enough for me to see the almost vindictive flash of success that crossed through his expression, and the fraction of a smirk which grew across his lips.

The look was gone by the time he hit the steps and exited from the hallway, leaving me and Linda the only ones who remained. I felt her eyes move to mine, perhaps questioning why I hadn't moved yet. But I couldn't do it. My body was a solid statue, utterly petrified into place as I stared into the empty void where the two had just been.

The icy conclusion shot through my veins. _'He knows!'_

* * *

A/N: Well, things are definitely starting to get interesting! Mello's decided who he's picking, Near's getting mad about it and Matt knows! Damn there's a lot happening! As always, huge, huge thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter! It means so much to hear how you're all enjoying this story so far and really helps to keep the motivation up to know that you all enjoy this as much as I enjoy writing it! So, please let me know what you thought of the chapter. How do you think Near will handle all of this that's going on now after such progress they'd made?

Please review  
_-Forbiddensoul562_


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